changing white attitudes toward black political...

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Changing White Attitudes toward Black Political Leadership

Despite the hopes of the civil rights movement, researchers have foundthat the election of African Americans to office has not greatly improvedthe well-being of the black community. By shifting the focus to thewhite community, this book finds that black representation can havea profound impact. Utilizing national public opinion surveys, data onvoting patterns in large American cities, and more in-depth studies ofLos Angeles and Chicago, Zoltan Hajnal shows that under most blackmayors there is real, positive change in the white vote and in the racialattitudes of white residents. This change occurs because black incum-bency provides concrete information that disproves the fears and expec-tations of many white residents. These findings not only highlight theimportance of black representation; they also demonstrate the criticalrole that information can play in racial politics and point to the abilityof at least some whites to change their minds about blacks and blackleadership.

Zoltan L. Hajnal is an assistant professor of political science at theUniversity of California, San Diego. He received his Ph.D. in politicalscience from the University of Chicago. He has published articles innumerous journals, including the American Political Science Review, theJournal of Politics, Urban Affairs Review, and Social Science Quarterly.He received the American Political Science Association’s award for BestPaper on Urban Politics. His research has been funded by the RussellSage Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

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Changing White Attitudes toward BlackPolitical Leadership

ZOLTAN L. HAJNALUniversity of California, San Diego

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cambridge university press

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Cambridge University Press32 Avenue of the Americas, New York, ny 10013-2473, usa

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First published 2006

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Hajnal, Zoltan, 1968–Changing White attitudes toward Black political leadership / Zoltan L. Hajnal.

p. cm.Includes bibliographical references and index.isbn 0-521-85747-3 (hardback) – isbn 0-521-67415-8 (pbk.)1. African Americans – Politics and government. 2. African American leadership –Public opinion. 3. Whites – United States – Attitudes. 4. Voting research – UnitedStates. 5. Public opinion – United States. 6. United States – Race relations – Politicalaspects. 7. African American mayors – United States – Public opinion. 8. AfricanAmerican mayors – United States – Case studies. 9. Chicago (Ill.) – Politics andgovernment – 1951– 10. Los Angeles (Calif.) – Politics and government. I. Title.e185.615.h26 2006

306.2089′96073–dc22 2006013120

isbn-13 978-0-521-85747-5 hardbackisbn-10 0-521-85747-3 hardback

isbn-10 978-0-521-67415-7 paperbackisbn-10 0-521-67415-8 paperback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility forthe persistence or accuracy of urls for external orthird-party Internet Web sites referred to in this bookand does not guarantee that any content on suchWeb sites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

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Contents

Acknowledgments page vii

Introduction 1

1 Black Leadership: The Possibilities 14

2 The Transformation of the White Vote 38

3 The Transformation of White Attitudes 73

4 Learning Across Different Cities 91

5 Black Mayoral Leadership in Los Angeles 103

6 Black Mayoral Leadership in Chicago 123

7 Other Cases Where Information Could Matter 141

Conclusion: A Tale of Caution and Hope 159

Statistical Appendixes 169

A: Appendix to Chapter 2 171

B: Appendix to Chapter 3 177

C: Appendix to Chapter 5 182

References 189

Index 213

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Acknowledgments

As with most other academic endeavors, this book has been a long timecoming. It started as an off-hand comment early in graduate school andhas grown through graduation, fellowships, and my time as a facultymember at the University of California, San Diego. Over all those yearsI have incurred countless intellectual and emotional debts. If so manypeople had not taken the time and energy to help me along, this projectwould definitely have suffered in quality and it may never have beencompleted. I can never begin to repay all of the debts, but I would at leastlike to acknowledge those who helped make this book much better thanit otherwise would have been, and perhaps even more importantly thosewho helped keep me sane through an often arduous process.

I want to first say thanks to my friends who labored with me in graduateschool. John Baughman, Greg Bovitz, Pam Cook, Nancy Crowe, RobertEisinger, Kevin Esterling, Karen Hoffman, Anna Greenberg, Thomas Kim,Roger Larocca, and Chris Parker all offered helpful advice and, on occa-sion, unwelcome but very necessary criticism. The rest of the Universityof Chicago American Politics Workshop, where I presented much of thisresearch, also deserve thanks. Four of my partners in crime, Paul Frymer,Jamie Druckman, Andrew Grant-Thomas, and Taeku Lee, deserve specialrecognition. Each provided seemingly endless support; their commentsand kindness have had a profound influence not only on the end productbut also on me as a person.

I owe large and lasting debts to my dissertation committee, MichaelDawson, Don Green, William J. Wilson, and Lynn Sanders. Michael readevery word of every draft and although I didn’t always like to hear what hehad to say, this would have been a much less worthwhile project without

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viii Acknowledgments

his assistance. Don Green, who was my first true mentor and who I stillhold responsible for getting me mixed up in the business of political sci-ence, has been there all along. His enthusiasm and encouragement wereinvaluable and his scholarly advice equally indispensable. William J. Wil-son’s contributions were also numerous. Above and beyond his counsel,I benefited from his help in getting an Urban Poverty Fellowship whichnot only provided me with a stimulating environment in which to workbut also helped to pay for dinner.

After leaving Chicago, I had the good fortune to spend time at fourdifferent institutions, Brandeis University, the Public Policy Institute ofChicago, the University of California, San Diego, and Princeton Univer-sity, each of which provided a stimulating intellectual home. Along theway, I met a number of close colleagues who generously gave of their timeand advice. Sidney Milkis at Brandeis was instrumental in giving me theconfidence to transition from student to scholar. Debbie Reed, Paul Lewis,and Mark Baldassare at PPIC gave me the time and resources to completemy American Political Science Review article – an important building stepin the intellectual development of this project. My colleagues at UCSD,Amy Bridges, Steve Erie, Karen Ferree, Clark Gibson, Peter Gourevitch,Gary Jacobson, David Lake, Mat McCubbins, Phil Roeder, Sam Kernell,Thad Kousser, and Sam Popkin helped me to formulate my ideas andwork through the all-too-frequent problems. Their insights and advicehave shaped the book in a range of important ways. Among my UCSDcolleagues, Amy Bridges stands alone. Over the years here, she has beenan incredible mentor and friend.

I am also very grateful to the numerous academics who gave of theirtime not because they had to but simply because they cared. Charles Bul-lock, Ira Katznelson, Arthur Lupia, Tony Marx, and Raphael Sonensheinall read and commented on different sections of the book. Paul Snider-man’s sage advice was critical. He has left a profound mark on the finalproduct. I also owe a special debt to Liz Gerber, who over the years hasnot just read my work but has encouraged my efforts and offered valu-able assistance on both a professional and a personal level. Other scholarsassociated with the Center for Advanced Behavioral Studies at Stanford,the Institute for Governmental Studies at UC-Berkeley, and the AmericanPolitics Workshop at Harvard also gave their time and provided importantfeedback.

I am proud to be associated with Cambridge University Press. DennisChong and Jim Kuklinski paved the way for me at the Press and thenhanded off the project to Lew Bateman who has done an excellent job

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of guiding this manuscript from rough draft to more polished product. Ithank all three of them for believing in this book. Anonymous reviewersat the Press similarly deserve thanks for forcing me to present clearer andmore compelling evidence.

I would be remiss not to mention the money that made it all happen.I was lucky enough to get support for this project from the Universityof Chicago, the Mellon Foundation, the National Science Foundation (inthe form of an Urban Poverty Fellowship), the Center for the Study ofDemocratic Politics at Princeton University, and the Hellman Fellowshipat UCSD. For all this support, care, and advice, I am amazed and grateful.

Anyone who knows me knows that my family is my rock. My parents,Vivian and Zoltan, and my sister, Catherine, were always there for me onthe far too many days when I was down and defeated. They picked meup, pointed me forward, and gave me all the love I needed to continue.From my family, I have learned not only to endure but how to live. I offerthem my deepest, warmest thanks. They will always be front and centerin my heart.

In the middle of this project, a new little girl came into my life. Andalready by age four, Lina has been able to offer invaluable assistance. Asa true native Californian, when times were tough, she simply told me,“Don’t worry daddy. Relax. Breathe in, breathe out.” It seemed to work.Lina is often a distraction from work but she is a distraction that I willcherish forever.

Last and clearly not least, I offer my thanks, my friendship, and mylove to my wife, Barbara Walter. Over the past years she played everyimaginable role in my life and in my career. Without her I would not havebegun this project. Without her I certainly would not have finished thisproject. Her words of advice, her love, and – yes – her thoughtful criticismhelped me more than I can say. For that and much, much more I dedicatethis book to her.

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Introduction

One of the great hopes of the civil rights movement was that AfricanAmericans, by gaining the right to vote, would be able to elect represen-tatives who could ultimately reduce or even eradicate racial inequality. Tomany in the community, black elected officials were “saviors who weregoing to uplift the people, eradicate police brutality, house the homeless,[and] find new jobs for everyone who was struggling.”1 In the 1960s,1970s, and 1980s, as blacks began to win office and displace thousandsof white incumbents, many in the African American community wereunderstandably jubilant. As one voter who witnessed the transition putit, “It was almost like the feeling you have when you see your first-born –a sense of accomplishment, of utter elation” (quoted in Donze 1998).

Decades later, it is clear that black representation has made a differ-ence. Many black leaders have tried valiantly to improve the lives of theirblack constituents, and black representation at different levels of officehas been associated with concrete, positive change for the black commu-nity. It has led directly to increases in the numbers of African Americansin many city governments (Browning, Marshall, and Tabb 1984; Eisinger1982; Levine 1974), to greater black political participation (Tate 2003;Gay 2001; Bobo and Gilliam 1990), to modest shifts in spending policies(Brown 1996; Karnig and Welch 1980), and to the implementation ofreforms to police practices (Headley 1985; Lewis 1987).2 But none of these

1 Bill Campbell, former mayor of Atlanta, made this comment regarding the expectationssurrounding the first black mayors (quoted in Fulwood 1995).

2 Not everyone agrees that black leaders have made a difference. Some scholars have arguedthat black incumbents have done no more for the black community than white incumbents

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2 Changing White Attitudes

changes has been dramatic. According to most studies, black politicalrepresentation has not lived up to expectations (Smith 1996; Singh 1998;Reed 1988; Perry 1990; G. Peterson 1994; Browning, Marshall, and Tabb1997; Marable 1992). Despite large gains in the number of black electedofficials across the country, there has been only moderate change in basicindicators of African American well-being and, even more importantly,almost no change in various measures of racial inequality.3 Though blackofficials have controlled the mayoralty in seven of the ten largest citiesin the country and have achieved nearly proportionate representation inthe House of Representatives, figures comparing black to white poverty,unemployment, and educational attainment remain largely unchanged. In1967, when the first big-city black mayors were elected in Cleveland andGary, blacks were three times more likely than whites to be poor, twiceas likely to be unemployed, and one-third as likely to have completedcollege. Today, with more than 9,000 black elected officials across thecountry, those figures are nearly identical (Blank 2001; Dawson 1994).Richard Arrington, mayor of Birmingham for twenty years, summed upthe situation when he was asked what blacks had to show economicallyfor his tenure in office: “Quite frankly,” he said, “we don’t have verymuch” (quoted in Edds 1987).

But only part of the story of black political representation has beentold. Studies have overlooked important gains associated with black

in similar cities and districts (Mladenka 1989, 1991). Swain (1995), for example, hasargued that white Democrats have done as much for African American interests as blackCongress members from the same types of districts (but see Tate 2003; Whitby 1998;Herring 1990).

3 The black community experienced undeniable gains in the early and mid-twentieth century(Thernstrom and Thernstrom 1997). The black middle class, for example, grew from just12% of the black population in 1949 to 41% today (Farley 1996). But since the late 1960s,the story has grown more complicated. Blacks have made progress in absolute terms. Highschool graduation rates, for example, have improved considerably, and earnings haveincreased slightly (Farley 1996). But relative to whites, most indicators of black well-being reveal little change in the past several decades (Blank 2001; Klinkner and Smith1999; Thernstrom and Thernstrom 1997). Despite the passage of civil rights legislation,increased social interaction between whites and blacks, and some claims that race hasbeen diminishing in significance in recent decades, studies reveal only minimal decreases inresidential segregation (Massey and Denton 1993; Massey 2001), fairly widespread racialdiscrimination in hiring and the housing industry (Kirschenman and Neckerman 1991;Bertrand and Mullainathan 2004; Massey and Denton 1993), persistent racial stereotyping(Bobo and Johnson 2000; Lee 2000), and strong racial undertones to many of the politicalchoices whites make (Mendelberg 2001; Carmines and Stimson 1989; Gilens 2001). Inshort, there are few signs of major gains since 1970 and plenty of evidence that race retainsmuch of its significance in American life (Dawson 1994).


Introduction 3

officeholding because they have focused almost exclusively on the blackcommunity while essentially ignoring the white community. In this book,I explore how experience with black leadership affects the attitudes,actions, and political choices of white Americans. Examining white reac-tions to black leadership – looking specifically at changes in the racialattitudes, voting behavior, and policy preferences of white Americans –demonstrates that black representation has meaningful and positiveeffects that are rarely considered in evaluations of the performance ofblack leaders. Although the election of African Americans to public officehas not yet improved the condition of blacks to the degree many peoplehad hoped, it has had a significant impact on white attitudes and votingbehavior, and these shifts, though small, could ultimately be the catalystfor the acceptance of more significant progress toward racial equality inAmerican society.

the information effects of black leadership

Experience with black incumbents has real consequences for many mem-bers of the white community because it imparts critical information aboutblack preferences that reduces whites’ uncertainty and fear about blacksand black leadership; this information essentially changes the way thatmany white Americans think about the black community and thereforesubtly alters the nature of racial politics and race relations in this country.Prior to the election of a black candidate, most white voters have little orno experience with black leadership. For this reason, many rely on racialstereotypes and past patterns in race relations to assess the likely con-sequences of a black candidate’s victory. The result is that many whitesfear that a black leader will favor the black community over the whitecommunity. They expect a black leader to redistribute income, encourageintegration, and generally channel resources toward the black community.In short, they imagine that black control will have negative consequencesfor themselves and their neighbors. Once a black candidate is elected,however, whites gain access to better information about the policy pref-erences of black leaders and the effects of black leadership. They becomeable to judge black candidates on their records. And because the whitecommunity rarely suffers under black incumbents, those records are, inalmost every case, better than white stereotypes and fears suggested theywould be. When blacks have the power (or are perceived as having thepower) to inflict harm on the white community and they choose not todo so, many whites are forced to reevaluate their assumptions.



The idea that white behavior in biracial electoral contests is governedby uncertainty and information is a novel one. Existing explanations of thevoting behavior and attitudes of whites tend to focus on two very differentmechanisms: (1) prejudice and (2) white backlash against perceived racialthreat. Taking these in order, it has been argued that black representation –no matter how positive its effect on the white community – should havelittle or no effect on white attitudes and political behavior because whiteAmericans are basically prejudiced and unwilling or unable to change theirviews of blacks (Hurwitz and Peffley 1998; Kuklinski et al. 1997; Allport1954; Adorno et al. 1950). If prejudice is indeed behind white oppositionto black empowerment, then the words and actions of black incumbentscannot affect whites’ views, because these views are too stable and toodeeply ingrained to be easily altered (Fazio et al. 1995; Devine 1989;Fiske 1998; Rothbart and John 1993). And even when whites experienceblack leadership and gather information from the experience that runscounter to stereotypes and expectations, they will simply ignore or dis-count evidence that challenges their prejudices (Macrae, Hewstone, andGriffith 1993; Weber and Crocker 1983; D. Hamilton, 1981).4 The sec-ond model suggests that black leadership spurs white backlash. At leastone scholar (Sidanius, Devereux, and Pratto 1991) argues that whiteshave a strong incentive to protect America’s racial hierarchy and theirhegemonic position within it. Indeed, past patterns in race relations indi-cate that when white social status is threatened by black gains, mem-bers of the white community tend to react by mobilizing to reverse thosegains (Olzak 1990; Stenner 1995). If past patterns prevail, the electionof blacks to office might represent just another step in an ongoing racialbattle.

understanding the variation in reactions

Certainly, neither of these two theories applies to all white Americansacross all contexts. Why do whites in some cities learn to accept a black

4 The fact that stereotypes of blacks are still widespread is taken by many as evidencethat “blatantly prejudiced attitudes continue to pervade the white population” (Kuklinskiet al. 1997). The specific terms that whites use to describe blacks may have changed butthere is ample evidence that large segments of the white community continue to see blacksas less intelligent, less hardworking, more difficult to get along with, and more violentthan whites (Bobo and Johnson 2000; Lee 2000; Devine and Elliot 1995; Schuman et al.1997).


Introduction 5

mayor, while in other cities whites’ opposition remains constant or evengrows? And why within a particular city do some white residents reactmore positively to black leadership than do others? In addition to assessingthe general nature of white reactions to black leadership and testing myinformation model of those reactions against the existing prejudice andwhite backlash models, it is an important secondary goal of this study toexplain variation in whites’ reactions to black leadership.

Variations in white reactions follow predictable patterns. First, whitereactions are affected by the actions of specific black leaders and the infor-mation that those actions provide. A black mayor who presides over a citywhere housing prices plummet and crime soars is likely to provide whiteresidents with different information, for example, than a black mayor whoaids in a city’s renaissance. But the actions of particular leaders are notthe central factor governing white reactions, because black representationalmost always proves to be less detrimental to white interests than manywhites fear. What accounts for most of the variation in white responses isnot variation between individual black leaders, but rather white voters’judgment of the credibility of the information that they receive about blackofficeholders: the more power that whites believe black leaders have, themore they will credit and be influenced by the information they receivefrom those leaders’ words and deeds. Practically speaking, this means thatwhites’ reactions to black representatives are heavily dependent on racialdemographics, which influence a representative’s efficacy in office. In addi-tion to variation among leaders and across locations, it is important toconsider differences between individuals, focusing particularly on parti-sanship and exploring the question of whether Democrats or Republicansare more likely to learn from black leaders.

why black representation and white learning matter

Understanding the relationship between black leaders and white voters isimportant for a number of reasons, both substantive and theoretical. It isclear from the trends in the number of black elected officials that AfricanAmerican representation is an important and growing phenomenon. In1960 only 280 blacks held office across the entire United States (Jaynesand Williams 1989). Today there are over 9,000 black elected officialsin America (JCPS 2003). Blacks have won the mayoralty in most of thenation’s big cities, there are roughly 600 African Americans in state leg-islatures nationwide, and blacks now hold about 10 percent of the seats



in the U.S. Congress. African Africans are still underrepresented at mostlevels of government, but undeniably they play a role among America’spolitical elite.

Moreover, white voters are becoming increasingly critical to black elec-toral victories. Each year more blacks win office in racially mixed andpredominantly white areas (Bositis 2002). Already six of the ten largestplurality white cities have had black mayors. Douglas Wilder’s term asgovernor of Virginia marked the first time a black politician had beenelected governor of an American state. Notable black congressional rep-resentatives such as Julia Carson, Robert Scott, and Barbara Lee can alsobe added to this expanding list of successful cross-over candidates.

It is also clear that if black representation is to continue to expand,black candidates will have to win over more white voters. Black politiciansalready represent most of the majority black districts and cities aroundthe country (Handley and Grofman 1994; Handley, Grofman, and Arden1997). In addition, court decisions in the 1990s have made it more difficultto alter electoral lines to create additional majority-minority districts. Ifmore blacks are to be elected, they will have to win in racially mixeddistricts.

Black representation, furthermore, may be setting the trend for aneven bigger phenomenon: Latino and Asian American representation.The Latino population is expected to double in the next ten years. Bymid-century, Latinos may represent as much as one-third of the U.S.population, while Asian Americans, currently the fastest-growing pop-ulation in the country, could account for almost 10 percent (Bureau ofthe Census 2002b). Latino and Asian American representation still lagsfar behind African American representation, but these demographic pro-jections suggest that the situation may change relatively quickly. Already,recent gains in Latino and Asian American officeholding have far out-stripped black advances (NALEO 2002; APALC 2003). What all of thissuggests is that minority representation is likely to become an increasinglycentral aspect of American politics. Whether white and non-white Amer-icans follow a path toward mutual understanding and interracial coop-eration or move instead toward distrust and escalating conflict may welldepend upon today’s minority leaders and their interactions with whiteconstituents.

In addition to speaking to these substantive issues, this study providesinsight into a number of important theoretical questions about the natureof race and politics in America. One of the most central debates in Amer-ican politics today concerns how much race shapes political choices. On


Introduction 7

one side of the debate are scholars who insist that race and racial prej-udice remain the primary factor in American politics in general and inwhite voting preferences in particular (Reeves 1997; Bell 1992; McCrary1990; Huckfeldt and Kohfeld 1989). According to these scholars, “racismis an integral, permanent, indestructible component of this society” (Bell1992: 217). Epitomizing this camp, Robert Starks maintains that “raceis such an overriding factor in American life that to support its elimina-tion or diffusion as a factor in elections through deracialization is folly”(1991: 217). On the other side of the debate stand those who believe thatrace has lost much of its significance in the electoral arena and that whitevoters are now willing to support black candidates in greater numbers(Swain 1995; Thernstrom and Thernstrom 1997). As Abigail Thernstromnotes, “Whites not only say they will vote for black candidates; they doso” (Thernstrom 1995). Some scholars even suggest that race is no morean issue in biracial elections than it is in other electoral contests (Highton2004; Citrin Green, and Sears 1990; Thernstrom 1987). A black candi-date is likely to lose, they argue, for many of the same reasons that a whitecandidate is likely to lose.

One of the central goals of this book is to show that this debateaddresses the wrong issue. The key question is not if race is central inthe minds of white voters, it is when race is central in the minds of whitevoters. By showing that the transition from white to black leadershipfrequently leads to notable shifts in white attitudes and behavior, I willdemonstrate that race plays a much more dynamic role in American pol-itics than we have understood. Though race and racial prejudice remainprevalent in American society, change is possible under the right circum-stances. To really understand how race “works” in the American context,we have to find out when racist voting is more likely, when color-blindpolitics tend to emerge, and ultimately why these differences occur.

In this study, I also make important observations regarding the rolethat information plays in the minds and voting decisions of the Ameri-can population. For decades, scholars have argued that Americans simplydo not have enough information about politics to make reasoned, ratio-nal decisions (Campbell et al. 1960; Converse 1964; Delli Carpini andKeeter 1996). It is true, for example, that less than half of all Americansknow both the name and the party affiliation of their representative inCongress (Jacobson and Kernell 1981). Many cannot even distinguishbetween the policy platforms of the Democratic and Republican parties(Bennett 1995). What political knowledge Americans do have is usuallynot molded into coherent, consistent reasoning about issues and events



in the electoral arena (Converse 1964).5 From this viewpoint, it wouldseem unrealistic to expect experiences under a relatively small number ofblack representatives to inspire real change in the views or actions of thepublic. But recent scholarship suggests that the average American doeshave enough information to make reasonable decisions about the polit-ical arena (Lupia 1994; Popkin 1991; Lupia and McCubbins 1998; Lauand Redlawsk 1997). If the job of evaluating leaders only requires indi-viduals to know basic facts about their own well-being and trends in thewelfare of their communities, then they may have enough informationin their daily personal lives. Moreover, there is clear evidence that votersregularly incorporate current events in the making of political decisions(Popkin 1991; Alvarez 1997; Bowler and Donovan 1994; C. Franklin andJackson 1983; Allsop and Weisberg 1988).

In keeping with this recent trend, one of my central contentions isthat politics – even local politics – can be extremely informative andconsequential. Under the right circumstances – for the purposes ofthis study, when race is involved – Americans will pay attention to thepolitical arena and will assess local politicians by evaluating conditionsin their own communities. Moreover, this evaluation can have realconsequences. By showing that whites tend to oppose black challengerswhen they are uncertain about how black leadership will affect them, butthat they become measurably more willing to support black incumbentswhen they have experienced black leadership and know more aboutits effects on their well-being, I hope to confirm the critical role thatinformation plays in the arena of racial politics.

Finally, there are obvious implications for how we view descriptiverepresentation and the degree to which we should try to expand minorityrepresentation. If the “politics as usual” that frequently occurs when blackrepresentatives are elected has a positive impact on white Americans andleads to a change in the white vote and in the racial sentiments expressedby a sizeable part of the white electorate, then there is at least one reasonto try to expand descriptive representation. And if black leaders can helpblack constituents – even if only to a limited extent – while at the sametime subtly changing white views and votes, this alone would seem to

5 As a result, many claim that political decisions are predominantly shaped by long-termforces, such as party identification, which are acquired early in life and are not easilychanged (Campbell et al. 1960; Beck and Jennings 1991; Green et al. 2002; Green andPalmquist 1990).


Introduction 9

make it imperative to create a body of elected officials that more closelyresembles the public.

the empirical strategy

The empirical goals of this book are twofold. The first good is to offer abroad account of how white Americans react to having African Americansas their leaders. Few researchers have even thought to ask about the impactof black leadership on the white community. Fewer still have tried toanswer that question. And no one has answered it in a systematic way.Studies that have touched on the relationship between black leaders andtheir white constituents have been largely anecdotal in nature – focusingon one leader or city – and often limited in their scope – focusing ononly one aspect of white behavior. The result is a range of contradictoryconclusions. We simply do not know how white residents respond to blackrepresentation.

To assess how black leadership affects the white community, I will focuson two critical measures of white political behavior. The first is the vote.After experiencing black leadership, are white Americans more or lesslikely to support black candidates? The second is racial attitudes. Afterexperiencing black leadership, are white Americans likely to view blacksand black leadership more positively, more negatively, or about the sameway? If black leadership can bring about real, positive change on both ofthese measures, it is clear that the election of African Americans to officerepresents an important step in American race relations.

For each of these two measures, I will assess changes in white politicalbehavior as systematically as possible. Rather than examining a singlecity or a single leader, I will examine an entire universe of cases of whitereactions to black representation. In particular, throughout the book Iwill analyze white reactions across the full range of cases of black may-oral leadership. That analysis will include an examination of every blackincumbents’ re-election bid in the twentieth century, a comparison of acomplete set of black challenger and black incumbent electoral bids, anda test of white views across a nationally representative sample of cities.Once all of these tests have been performed, we should have a completeand fairly compelling picture of the impact of black leadership on thepolitics of the white community.

The other important empirical contribution of this book is to test thethree different theoretical accounts of the white community. Are most



whites really governed by the information model or is social dominanceor racial prejudice a more important determinant of white reactions toblack leadership? Fortunately, since each of these theories offers differentpredictions about changes in the white vote and in white attitudes, bylooking systematically at how black leadership affects the vote and racialattitudes, we should be able to determine which of these three models isat play.

the case of black mayors

I focus on the implications of black leadership at the mayoral level for fourreasons. First, in order for white residents to react in any way to black lead-ership, they must be aware that black leadership exists. Whereas the namesof school board members or lower court justices are relatively unknownto the residents of most communities, people can usually identify theirmayor. In cities with black mayors, in fact, available evidence suggeststhat the overwhelming majority of residents can identify the mayor (Cole1976).

Second, to test the willingness of whites to support black leadership,the office to which a black person is elected must be viewed as importantand powerful. Whites may support black candidates who seek officesthat whites perceive as powerless and unimportant without fear of theconsequences. The mayoral office, which is considered by most peopleto be a powerful and influential post, represents a truer test of whitewillingness to support black leadership than would a test of another, lesspowerful position.

Third, for white residents to be able to judge black leaders, they mustbe able to observe the actions of a black incumbent and connect them tochanges in local conditions or policies. As the executive of a city, the mayorfocuses on local issues and often acts unilaterally. State and national leg-islators, by contrast, often concentrate on regional or national issues andmust generally obtain the support of their colleagues before acting. Eventhough the official powers of mayors are often quite limited, evidencestrongly suggests that the public views them as responsible for local con-ditions. A poll undertaken in Washington, DC, where the mayor’s poweris limited, found that a clear majority of city residents believed the mayor“can control” or “exact influence” on almost every policy issue facing thecity (Coleman and Sussman 1978: A1). Because residents feel that theirmayor has the power to influence policy, they are quite willing to judgeblack leadership in general on the basis of a black mayor’s performance.


Introduction 11

Finally, on a more practical level, black mayors make an excellentchoice simply because there are so many of them. In 2001, there were451 black mayors in the United States, 49 of whom served in cities witha population of over 50,000 (JCPS 2002). Black mayors have held officein four of the five largest American cities, and, in fact, almost 10 per-cent of all big-city mayors are African American (JCPS 2002). There areenough cases of black mayors in cities with different racial demograph-ics to allow for empirical analysis; the availability of data on city-levelvoting patterns, local government spending, campaign rhetoric, and eco-nomic and social conditions makes the mayoralty one of the only feasiblechoices for statistical study.

Differences between the mayoralty and other political offices meanthat the results of this study cannot necessarily be applied to other typesof black leadership. In fact, I believe that white learning is likely to bemore pronounced under black mayors than under most other types ofblack leaders. As I suggested earlier, when black people are elected toserve as state or federal legislators, they are less likely than black mayorsto be viewed as being responsible for local conditions or policies; thus,experience with black legislators should do less than experience with blackmayors to change white views and votes. By the same token, there maybe offices that foster more pronounced learning. A black president, forexample, would surely be seen as much more powerful than a black mayorand would therefore present an interesting and important test case of theinformation model.

an overview

This study proceeds as follows: the first chapter explains the three differenttheories of black representation – the information model, the prejudicemodel, and the white backlash model – in greater detail and describesthe predictions they make regarding the effect of black leadership onwhite political behavior, including the predictions the information modelmakes about variation across leaders, individuals, and cities. The chapterconcludes with an overview of existing research and a description of mymethods.

Chapter 2 analyzes changes in the white vote under incumbent blackmayors to answer three questions about black candidates: (1) Are whitevoters more or less likely to support black challengers than they are tosupport the same black candidates when they run as incumbents? (2) Doesblack incumbency at the mayoral level lead to changes in the nature of



the white vote? In particular, does experience with black leadership teachvoters to pay increasing attention to nonracial factors such as endorse-ments, candidate quality, and the economy? (3) Does information fromone black incumbent play a role when white voters consider other blackcandidates? In other words, is any learning that occurs transferable fromone candidate to another?

Chapter 3 looks at changes in white racial attitudes under black may-ors. What is it that whites do or do not learn from their experienceswith black leadership? Do they simply learn not to fear a particular blackincumbent, or do their attitudes toward the black community also change?Here, I utilize responses to the American National Election Study (ANES)surveys, which have over the past half-century polled a representativesample of Americans about a range of their political views, to comparewhite attitudes before and after the election of a black mayor and toassess changes in white attitudes as experience with black officeholdingincreases.

I examine variation in white reactions to black leadership from onecity to another in Chapter 4. Because I contend that the credibility of theinformation that black incumbency provides is critically dependent on theamount of control that blacks are able to exercise once in office, I lookat changes in white voting behavior between black challenger and blackincumbent elections in twenty-five cities in terms of the racial makeupof these cities to determine whether demographic differences can explainwhy whites seem to learn from black leadership more readily in someplaces than in others.

In Chapter 5, I look more closely at the course of black mayoral lead-ership in a single city, Los Angeles. This case study is designed to providemore direct evidence of the process of racial learning and to demonstrateas clearly as possible how information from black incumbency slowlytranslates into changes in white attitudes and behavior. Throughout thechapter, I tie the thoughts and actions of white residents in the city tothe actions of Tom Bradley during his twenty-year tenure as mayor. Ithen, in Chapter 6, follow white attitudes and actions in Chicago, a citywhere black leadership has had little to no positive effect on white politicalbehavior, in an effort to understand and explain the lack of change. I showthat ongoing white opposition to Harold Washington and subsequentblack candidates in Chicago is at least in part a function of the inabil-ity of the city’s black leaders to prove themselves. Because Washington’stenure led to political stalemate, white residents could not learn about


Introduction 13

the real consequences of his leadership, and widespread white concernsabout blacks taking control of the local political arena remain.

Chapter 7 considers the generalizability of the information modelbeyond the mayoral office, beyond the African American race, and beyondrace itself. I begin by considering the effects of black representation at thecongressional level. After pausing to look at African Americans’ reac-tions to black mayors, I offer a brief account of the history of AsianAmerican and Latino elected officials and discuss some of the similaritiesand contrasts between race, religion, and gender in terms of the poten-tial applicability of the information model. In my conclusion I review themajor findings of the book and discusses a number of the substantiveand theoretical implications of this research. I outline some lessons forpolicy makers interested in either expanding minority representation orstructuring electoral districts to minimize racial conflict.

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1

Black Leadership

The Possibilities

In a nation that has long been divided by race, the election of black leadersis of great historic importance. But it is in many ways an uncertain stepwith unknown consequences. Black leadership raises both meaningfulpossibilities and real risks, especially when African Americans are electedin racially mixed areas. After winning elections, black officials must leadcommunities that are racially diverse and often bitterly divided. Howdoes white America respond to African American leadership? We haveanecdotal evidence from various cases, but we know very little about thegeneral pattern and ultimate consequences of black leadership: We don’tknow whether minority political leadership tends to exacerbate or reduceracial tension, whether black incumbents are more or less successful thantheir white counterparts in subsequent elections, or under what politi-cal, economic, and racial conditions white support can be maintained orincreased over time.

In this chapter, I detail three different accounts of black-white relationsthat offer predictions about what might happen after the onset of blackleadership. I begin by presenting in full my information model of whitebehavior, which focuses on the information that experience with blackincumbents provides white voters. I then contrast this model with twoconventional theories drawn from the existing literature on race relationsand American politics: the prejudice model and the white backlash model.Finally, I review existing accounts of white responses to black leadership,note some of the deficiencies of these accounts, and suggest a more sys-tematic approach to assessing the effects of black representation on whitepolitical behavior.

14


Black Leadership: The Possibilities 15

the information model

The information model suggests that black leadership should significantlychange the voting behavior of whites and the way white Americans thinkabout black candidates because the candidates’ terms impart critical infor-mation that greatly reduces uncertainty and dispels white fears aboutblacks and black leadership. The logic is fairly straightforward. Whenblack challengers run for office, many white residents are uncertain aboutthe consequences of black leadership and fear that black leaders will favorthe black community over the white community, thereby reversing theracial status quo. To prevent this from happening, large segments of thewhite community are apt to mobilize to prevent a black electoral vic-tory. But if a black challenger is able to overcome white opposition andwin office, most white fears are not borne out. Black leadership maylead to marginal changes to a few aspects of black well-being, but forthe vast majority of the white community, the world under black lead-ers is strikingly similar to the world under white leaders (Smith 1996;Singh 1998; Mladenka 1989, 1991; Eisinger 1982; Tate 2003; Browning,Marshall, and Tabb 1997; Marable 1992). Once black officeholders havethe opportunity to prove that black leadership generally does not harmwhite interests, uncertainty should fade, whites’ views of blacks and blackleadership should improve, and more whites should be willing to considervoting for black candidates.1 Black leadership therefore serves an impor-tant although difficult to observe informational role.

White Uncertainty and Fear in Black Challenger Elections

To understand the important informational role black leadership playsfor the white community, one must first understand why white Americansfear black leadership in the first place. When blacks run for offices theyhave never held, most whites do not know what to expect. Normally,voters have less information about a challenger than they do about an

1 My information model is akin in some ways to the interracial contact hypothesis developedby Allport (1954) and confirmed by others (Jackman and Crane 1986; Sigelman andWelch 1993). The interracial contact theory maintains that social contact or friendshipwith minorities of the same socioeconomic status should have a positive effect becauseit places individuals from two groups in a cooperative setting where their similaritiesbecome evident. In this way, social contact and friendship differ fundamentally from mostinterracial interactions, which are often competitive in nature. I believe that the act ofexperiencing black leadership may represent a different type of interracial contact thatalso generally leads to a positive learning experience.



incumbent. When that challenger is black, information is even sparser:most whites have not lived under a black mayor, a black representative,a black senator, or a black president. They simply do not know what theconsequences of black leadership are likely to be.2 Whites express concernabout racial integration, school busing, and the flight of white businesses,to name just a few of their fears. A truck driver in Chicago described hisconcern about a black mayoral victory in this way: “I don’t know howto say this but I am afraid [Harold Washington] is going to exert all ofhis powers for the black community and the white community is going toget nothing. My fear is that he is going to try to push racial integration,which is fine as long as I don’t lose money on my house . . . because I justcan’t take the loss” (quoted in Coleman 1983a).3

Having little or no personal experience with black leadership, manywhite voters rely on heuristics, or shortcuts, to try to gauge how blackleaders are likely to behave once elected (Conover and Feldman 1989;Rahn 1993; McDermott 1997). When the candidates under considerationare black, the chosen heuristic is usually race (Reeves 1997; Terkildsen1993; Williams 1990). Given the fraught history of race in this coun-try, persistent economic differences between white and black America,ongoing racial conflict in many cities and states, and sharp disagreementbetween whites and blacks over government policy, white voters havesome logical reasons to assume that black leaders will try to serve blackinterests, however wrong that assumption usually turns out to be (Kinderand Sanders 1996; Schuman et al. 1997).

Black challengers can and usually do try to counter the uncertaintysurrounding their candidacies by running “deracialized” or pro-whitecampaigns, but white voters tend to ignore these candidates’ campaignstatements, which they perceive as having little credibility (Lupia andMcCubbins 1998). Moreover, black candidates’ efforts to deracialize theircampaigns are often overcome by their white opponents, who attempt togarner white support by playing on white fears. The media also some-times heightens uncertainty by continuously noting the racial nature ofblack-white contests and reminding voters in certain contests that blackvictory would put an African American in control of a particular office

2 Underlying this account is the belief that uncertainty, rather than ambivalence, is at theheart of white views toward black challengers (Alvarez and Brehm 2002).

3 As Bartels (1986) has shown, uncertainty in and of itself is likely to hurt a candidate’schances of winning an election, so the extraordinary uncertainty surrounding black chal-lengers puts them at a severe disadvantage with white voters.



for the first time (Mendelberg 2001; Reeves 1997; Graber 1984). In theend, the limited information that whites generally have, the inflammatorycampaigns that white opponents frequently run, and the racial heuristicsthat whites rely on all tend to fuel negative projections about the impact ofblack victory. Heightened uncertainty in black challenger elections leadsmost whites to believe they are facing an anti-white candidate and to voteto prevent a black takeover.4

Why Does Black Incumbency Make a Difference?

Incumbency gives any officeholder a critical advantage (King and Gelman1991). Often, we think of that advantage in terms of an incumbent’s accessto resources or endorsements, but incumbency also plays a vital informa-tional role. As Popkin has noted, “The incumbent is, to a certain extent,a known commodity. In contrast, a challenger is often a great unknown”(Popkin 1995: 33). As residents become more and more familiar with anincumbent and his or her actions, their uncertainty and fear about whathe or she might do slowly fades away. Because uncertainty surroundingblack candidacy is usually much greater and misperceptions about theconsequences of black leadership are more widespread, this process is allthe more important for black representatives.

The key is that whites believe the information they get from their expe-riences with black leadership is credible. It is not simply cheap talk (Lupiaand McCubins 1998, Alvarez 1997). Experiments in social psychologyhave increasingly found that one of the few times whites really changetheir attitudes about blacks is when they know that blacks are free tochoose their actions. Wilder, Simon, and Faith (1996), for example, main-tain that whites’ stereotypes of blacks only change when whites witnessAfrican Americans who act anti-stereotypically and when they view thatbehavior as internally caused. In short, only when blacks can wield author-ity are their actions likely to be seen by whites as truly informative. Thus,black political leadership is especially important in the minds of white res-idents because it marks one of the first times that blacks have authority

4 This pattern of white mobilization in the face of a new challenge from blacks has beendemonstrated in a range of political interactions between blacks and whites. Research hasshown that as black voter registration increases, whites also increase their registrationrates (Alt 1994; Loewen 1990). Racial bloc voting, already prevalent throughout thecountry, increases in areas and districts where blacks become active voters (Mayer 1996;Murray and Vedlitz 1978).



to enact policies or make changes that could harm the white community.Once black representatives have had a chance to govern, and thus anopportunity to assist the black community at the expense of the whitecommunity, whites obtain important information about the interests andpreferences of black representatives. If black officeholders are perceivedto have voluntarily pursued an agenda that helped both the black andwhite communities, then whites who feared a black takeover may reeval-uate their opinions of black leadership: when white residents do not losetheir jobs, when blacks do not move into white neighborhoods in largenumbers, and when crime does not proliferate under a black mayor, whitevoters learn that they have less to fear from black leadership than theyoriginally thought.5 If they choose to, these voters can begin to base theirassessments of black leadership on black incumbents’ track records ratherthan on stereotypes, exaggerated fears, or the incendiary predictions ofwhite candidates, leading to a more limited focus on racial considerationsin subsequent biracial elections.

If this information model is valid, we should see a distinct patternin elections in which black and white candidates oppose each other. Inblack challenger elections, because most whites’ decisions about whetherto support the black candidate will be based on racial fear, few shouldchoose to support the black candidate. In black incumbent elections, onthe other hand, racial fears should play a diminished role, and a greaternumber of white voters should cast ballots based on the track record of theincumbent and the specifics of the campaign. As more blacks are elected toleadership positions over the years, uncertainty regarding black leadershipshould decline in American society as a whole, and whites should becomeincreasingly inclined to consider supporting black challengers.

An important assumption behind this model is that whites have infor-mation about black leadership. This may be a difficult assumption forsome to accept. As I mentioned in the introduction, existing studies sug-gest that the average American knows very little about politics (Berelson,Lazarsfeld, and McPhee 1954; Bennett 1995; Campbell et al. 1960;

5 Survey experiments have shown that when given information about blacks that clearlycontradicts stereotypes, whites’ political views do change (Peffley, Hurwitz, and Sniderman1997). Pettigrew (1976) and Eisinger (1980) were among the first to notice the impact ofblack incumbency on white fears. More recently, Swain has argued that information maybe a key variable for black candidates: “It is instructive that the black candidates whohave been most successful in winning white support typically have provided the voterswith plenty of information about themselves” (1995: 209).



Converse 1964; Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996).6 There is ample evidence,however, that information levels vary across contexts. Numerous studiesshow that the public is especially well informed about the select issuesthat they care about (Hutchings 2003; Iyengar 1990). Thus, if the elec-tion of a black candidate to office is something that many white Americansperceive as an especially important or especially threatening event, theseindividuals are likely to have or to acquire information on the subject. It isclear, furthermore, that many white Americans do care who their mayoris. As Thomas Pettigrew (1976) has noted, “Running for captain of theship” is the ultimate test of how averse whites are to black control. Evenin cities with weak mayors, the mayor is seen as the symbolic leader ofthe city and the main person responsible for local conditions (Colemanand Sussman 1978). If the city falls apart, the mayor is likely to be thefirst one blamed (Holli and Green 1989; Stokes 1993). And as we will see,the typical white-black contest sparks extraordinary attention from theelectorate. For white Americans who care about race, then, the electionof a black mayor is an important step worth paying attention to.

Moreover, white voters do not need a lot of information to assessblack leadership.7 They need only know two things: 1) that an AfricanAmerican is in office, and 2) that their own well-being or the well-beingof friends has not been negatively affected.8 More sophisticated votersmay learn specifics about the policies and actions of black leaders andacquire data on the economic and social well-being of the black and whitecommunities at different points in time, but such detailed information isfar from necessary for an individual white resident to update his or her

6 Page and Shapiro remark that “it is undeniable that most Americans are, at best, fuzzyabout the details of government structure and policy” (1992: 13). The incoherence ofindividual public opinion may, however, be overstated by these studies. Other accountshave suggested that much of the instability of individual opinion is due to measurementerror (Achen 1975) and real ambivalence about issues (Hochschild 1981; Alvarez andBrehm 2002).

7 An emerging trend in the recent literature on information is to argue that individuals donot need a lot of information to make reasonable choices. Individuals can use a varietyof “cognitive heuristics” or shortcuts to simplify the political environment and help makerational decisions (Tversky and Kahneman 1974, Simon 1945, Lupia 1994, Popkin 1991,Iyengar 1990). Some have even found that because political choices are often simple, thosewith limited cognitive ability tend to make decisions in a very similar fashion to those withthe highest levels of cognitive ability (Rahn et al. 1990).

8 Such information is not usually difficult to obtain: as I have mentioned, media coverage ofwhite-black political transitions is usually extensive and often highlights the significanceof new black leadership (Graber 1984).



view of black leadership. In other words, the information hurdles to whitelearning are not high.

Fortunately, for the information model, the available evidence suggeststhat most white residents do have both critical pieces of information.First, white residents are very likely to know about the existence of blackleadership. Surveys indicate that most residents generally know whotheir mayor is and that, when the mayor is black, almost all residentsare aware of the race of the mayor. Cole (1976), in particular, in a studyof twenty-five cities in New Jersey found that roughly 80 percent of cityresidents could identify their mayor. Even more importantly, having ablack mayor increased knowledge and interest. In cities with black may-ors, roughly 90 percent of respondents could identify the mayor. Otherpolls in other states and cities have partially corroborated these results.9

Second, there is evidence to suggest that most white Americans do getenough information to evaluate black leadership. As we will see in thetwo case studies, and at various points throughout the book, when asked,the vast majority of white residents are willing to evaluate local economicconditions and the performance of their local (black) leaders. Moreover,these evaluations have a substantial impact on voting preferences insubsequent elections.10 This is evident both in the case studies presentedlater in this book and in several recent studies of mayoral approval, whichshow a close link between evaluations of a range of specific city servicesand mayoral approval under black and white mayors (Stein, Ulbig, andPost 2005; Howell and Perry 2004; Howell and McLean 2001). In short,most white residents of cities with black mayors seem to have enough

9 A May 2000 Kaiser poll found, for example, that, nationwide, 58 of every 100 respon-dents knew their mayor. When that mayor was a big city black mayor, knowledge levelsseemed to be even higher. A May 1992 Gallup poll indicated that 92 percent of respon-dents nationwide had heard of and had an opinion on Tom Bradley. The figure for DavidDinkins was 72 percent. The same survey indicated that even Richard Arrington wasknown by some 46 percent of the national population. Other surveys likewise demon-strate that mayors tend to be more well known than Congressmen or state representatives(Lewis, Taylor, and Kleppner 1997).

10 We also know that in other contexts, e.g., national politics, there is ample researchindicating that individual Americans can accurately gauge trends in economic circum-stances. As Conover and her colleagues note, “the public is remarkably accurate in theirassessments” of national economic trends (Conover, Feldman, and Knight 1986: 574).Moreover, data from a variety of elections suggest that individual voters can and do usethese assessments to help determine their vote choice (Nadeau and Lewis-Beck 2001;Kiewiet 1983). Incumbents who preside over expanding economies are likely to garnermore votes than incumbents whose tenure coincides with dips in real income or increasesin unemployment (Erikson 1989; Tufte 1978).



information to at least consider changing their views of blacks and blackleadership.11

enduring racial stereotypes

Believing that white residents will respond rationally to new informationand will be open to change on matters of race may very well be naıve;the availability of credible, positive information about black leadershipdoes not guarantee that whites will assimilate it and change their views.12

Traditional accounts, in fact, seldom suggest that the white populationis receptive to change where race is concerned (Key 1949; Allport 1954;Tajfel 1981; Dovidio and Gaertner 1986; Kinder 1986; Jackman 1977).Instead, scholars are more apt to argue that because the bulk of the whitecommunity is guided by racial animosity and racial prejudice, there is littlereason to suspect that white attitudes or behavior will change in responseto black leadership (Allport 1954; Hurwitz and Peffley 1998). Prejudice,“an emotional, rigid attitude” that is “irrationally based,” is likely tobe too deeply embedded to be easily discarded (Pettigrew 1972; Fazioet al. 1995; Rothbart and John 1993). As Allport notes, “A prejudice,unlike a simple misconception, is actively resistant to all evidence thatwould unseat it” (1954: 9). Even if the words and actions of black incum-bents do not fit whites’ racial stereotypes, a prejudice model predicts thatwhites will use an array of tactics to try to maintain those stereotypesand create cognitive consistency (D. Hamilton 1981). They will ignoreevents that do not square with their views of blacks and discount con-tradictory evidence as an exception to the rule (Kunda and Oleson 1997;

11 It is worth making one last comment about information levels: much of the recent liter-ature on political information notes that aggregate opinion is much more rational andcoherent than individual opinion. By aggregating preferences, we can often cancel outmeasurement error and individual mistakes to obtain views that are more responsiveto real-world events (Page and Shapiro 1992; Erickson and Wright 1989; Bowler andDonovan 1998; but see Althaus 2003; Bartels 1996). As Hutchings notes, “Collectiveopinion is often remarkably informed and influential” (2003: 6). Thus, when we focuson the aggregate white vote or average white views, we stand a good chance of seeingopinion change that is directly related to changes in local conditions.

12 Of course, a critical assumption behind this information model is that white residents usethis new information and change their minds as a result of learning that black leadershipdoes not harm the white community. Sniderman and Piazza (1993) have been able todemonstrate marked changes of opinion on matters of race when respondents are exposedto new information and arguments, but ultimately the only way to test the assumptionthat information leads to white learning is to look for changes in whites’ views and votesbefore, during, and after the election of a black leader.



Rothbart and John 1993; Macrae, Hewstone, and Griffith 1993; Weberand Crocker 1983).

But is this a realistic picture of white America today? Race relationshave been fundamentally transformed in the last century (Klinkner andSmith 1999; Schuman et al. 1997; Thernstrom and Thernstrom 1997).Expressions of biological racism have declined precipitously. As Kinderand Sanders comment, “Remarks, once thoroughly representative of aparticular time and place, are unimaginable today” (1996: 92). WhiteAmericans offer almost unanimous support for the principle of racialequality (Schuman et al. 1997). And there are those who believe thatwhites are no longer fundamentally driven by racial animosity (Snidermanand Carmines 1997; Thernstrom and Thernstrom 1997). Still, there isample evidence that racial stereotypes and racial prejudice continue toplay a central role in American politics. Surveys indicate that much ofthe white community stereotypes blacks and believes that blacks as agroup are not as intelligent, not as hard working, more violent, and moredisagreeable than whites (Bobo and Johnson 2000; Lee 2000). Longi-tudinal studies of stereotypes, in fact, find that whites’ views of blackshave changed little in recent decades (Devine and Elliot 1995; McCona-hay, Hardee, and Batts 1981; Schuman et al. 1997). Moreover, a rangeof research indicates that these racial considerations play a critical rolein white political decision making. Racial considerations influence manyof the policy choices whites make (Gilens 2001), strongly shape whitepartisanship and white voting patterns (Mendelberg 2001; Carmines andStimson 1989; Peffley, Hurwitz, and Sniderman 1997; Edsall and Edsall1991), and, most importantly for the purposes of this study, affect whitewillingness to support black candidates (Terkildsen 1993; Reeves 1997;Colleau et al. 1990). In one study, white respondents who knew littleabout candidates besides their race rated black candidates as worse thanwhite candidates on 19 out of 20 leadership and personality characteris-tics, viewing black candidates as less trustworthy, less able to “get thingsdone,” and less intelligent (Williams 1990). And in many real-world con-tests, such stereotypes clearly prevent whites from voting for black can-didates (Kinder and Sears 1981; Pettigrew 1972; but see Citrin, Green,and Sears 1990; Highton 2004). As one scholar put it, “Black politicalaspirants cannot compete equally or effectively in electoral jurisdictionscomprised overwhelmingly of white voters because of the continued vigorof racial prejudice and discrimination” (Reeves 1997: 9).

Thus, the prejudice model predicts that no matter how well the whitecommunity does under black leadership, black incumbency will ultimately



have no effect on whites’ attitudes toward blacks or on whites’ behaviortoward black incumbents. Because racial prejudice is widespread, thismodel argues, there is little reason to believe that black officeholders canchange the way white Americans think about race or the way they votein black incumbent elections. In the end, no matter what black leaders door do not do in office, few whites are likely to be significantly affected bytheir experiences with black leadership.

white backlash

Another view in the literature on racial politics proposes that white actionsand attitudes, rather than stemming primarily from prejudice and racialanimus, instead reflect concerns about racial hierarchies or social status(Sidanius, Devereux, and Pratto 1991). According to this view, whitesmay dislike blacks and hold a range of stereotypes about them, but whatthey care most about is maintaining their hegemonic position in society.As Sidanius and his co-authors note in their outline of social dominancetheory, there is “a very general and basic human desire to perceive one’sgroup as superior to and possessing greater social status than the general-ized other” (Sidanius, Pena and Sawyer 2001: 380). To the extent that thisis true, having African Americans in positions of leadership poses a realthreat to whites. When blacks attain positions of power over the whitecommunity, the pre-existing racial order is turned upside down, regardlessof what black leaders do in office. Since the stability of the racial orderis critical to the white community, there is every reason to believe thatwhites will respond to black electoral victory with counter-mobilization.As Piven and Cloward predicted in the late 1960s before the election ofthe nation’s first big-city black mayors, “Negro control can only deepenracial cleavages in the urban area” (1977: 17).

The backlash model of behavior is supported by the historical record.Most infamously, southern whites responded to the significant expansionof black political representation during Reconstruction with massive resis-tance, instituting a program of unprecedented violence, poll taxes, newresidency and registration requirements, and at-large elections (Parker1990; Foner 1984; Holt 1979). In Louisiana, for example, in less thanone year, Democrats killed over one thousand people in their effort toregain control of the political process (Kousser 1974). Over a thirty-yeartime span, white southerners virtually wiped out all of the gains madeby black voters: in 1872, there were 324 blacks elected to state legisla-tures and Congress in the former Confederate states, but by 1900 only



5 black officials were in power (Kousser 1992). More recently, the actionsof many whites during the civil rights movement reaffirmed the backlashhypothesis, as white violence spiked in response to the passage of variouscivil rights initiatives and numerous other encroachments on white privi-lege (Stenner 1995). Olzak (1990, 1992) found that in subsequent years,white racial violence was particularly pronounced during periods of uncer-tainty or instability in race relations. Specifically, rates of racial violencerose in response to black migration to formerly white-dominated urbanareas, black entry into formerly white professions, and political chal-lenges to white supremacy in the South. Green and his colleagues (Green,Strolovitch, and Wong1998) have demonstrated that racial migration wasa key determinant of hate crimes against blacks in the late twentiethcentury. As Klinkner and Smith (1999) have astutely noted, moreover,progress toward racial equality has been uneven. Episodes of progressand black gains have almost inevitably been followed by retrenchment.The historical record is clear: at many points in American history, whiteAmericans have not welcomed blacks’ gains in the political arena. If pastpatterns of white behavior in the face of black empowerment are any indi-cation of how whites will respond to a modern-day transition from whiteto black political leadership, we should expect black electoral victories tobe followed by heated white backlash.

variation across contexts, individuals, and leaders

Although these three theories are implicitly set up in opposition to oneanother, no single model can explain the outcome of every biracial electionin American politics or the thinking of every white voter in those elections.The intention of this study is merely to see which theory best accounts forunderlying trends or changes on the margin.

In addition, given that white responses to black leadership do varyfrom one case to another, a second important aim of this study is tounderstand why white responses differ across leaders, contexts, and indi-viduals. Variations in the style and substance of black leadership, differ-ent local demographic contexts, and differences in individual character-istics may all affect how whites respond to their experiences under blackleaders.

I use the logic of the information model to make predictions aboutwhere we should see the most pronounced and positive changes in whiteattitudes and behavior and where we should find ongoing white resistanceto black empowerment. It suggests that variation in white reactions to



black leadership should be directly related to variation in the level andtype of information that whites receive from black leaders. In particular,three factors should shape the information environment and ultimatelydetermine how large segments of the white community react to blackleadership: the impact of particular black leaders, individual attitudes, anddemographic context.

Learning across Leaders

Since the information model argues that experience with black incum-bency changes white views by demonstrating to whites that black leader-ship does not appreciably hurt white interests, white reactions should bedependent, at least in part, on the words and actions of black leaders andthe ongoing well-being of the local white community. In particular, effortson behalf of the black incumbent to redistribute substantial resources fromthe white community to the black community may increase white fearsabout the likely long-term consequences of black leadership. Similarly,regardless of the stated intentions and policy actions of black leaders,economic downturns that affect whites should eliminate gains in whitesupport. Cities or districts where housing prices plummet or crime ratessoar – two primary white fears – should see little or no change in whitewillingness to support black candidates.

At the same time, as I have mentioned, the hurdle for black leadershipis not high: black leaders need only prove to be better than the exagger-ated fears of many white residents. Coleman Young, for example, wasarguably one of the most radical black mayors of his generation. He vig-orously pursued affirmative action and often put the black communityfirst, but by the end of his tenure in Detroit, only a tiny fraction of whiteresidents had lost their jobs or their homes because of his actions. Becausehis policies were less radical than many whites expected, even his tenureseemed to allay white fears (Eisinger 1980).13 In fact, even if black mayorswanted to radically redistribute resources toward the black community,the reality is that in most cases they probably could not. Even in citieswhere they have a great deal of power, mayors generally cannot unilat-erally redistribute wealth or reform the macroeconomy. State and federalconstraints, competition from other cities, and rival politicians all serve as

13 For many white Detroit residents, the defining moment of Coleman Young’s tenurewas probably his efforts to prevent a race riot by intervening with black protesters in1975 rather than his actions to enact liberal policies on affirmative action or policereform.



more or less binding constraints on local political leaders (Eisinger 1983;Peterson 1981). It seems clear, then, that a black incumbent can servethe black community in important ways while still allaying white fears.In the majority of cases, there should be at least some reason for manywhites who live under a black mayor to learn that their fears about blackleadership are not warranted.14

In the end, while most cases of black leadership should lead to greateracceptance by whites, the extent of that change in any given case will becontingent both on local conditions and on black leaders themselves. Assuch, it will be important to consider local policy initiatives, campaignrhetoric, and changes in the social or economic well-being of the whitecommunity when assessing white reactions to black leadership.

Learning across Individuals

The political views and biases of individual white people also factor intothe process of white learning. The same information can be interpretedin different ways by different individuals. In this study, I examine par-tisanship as a mitigating factor on individuals’ views. White Democratsoften largely agree with the political views of liberal black challengers,and thus they are the voters whose views and votes are most likely to betransformed by information garnered from black leadership. With littlereason other than racial fears to oppose liberal black challengers, whiteDemocrat voters may be especially sensitive to information that reducesthose fears. Conservative white Republicans, by contrast, may have mul-tiple reasons, in addition to race, for opposing liberal black candidates.Also, given what many argue is a clear link between conservatism andanti-black attitudes (Kinder and Sanders 1996; Kinder and Sears 1981),we might predict that white Republicans will be more resistant to theinformation that black representation provides.

Individual characteristics other than partisanship may also influencewhites’ reactions to black incumbents. Those who know more about thepolicies and actions of black leaders and their effects on local conditionsmight more readily learn from and accept black leadership. Individualswho are educated and well informed, however, are also less likely to hold

14 At the same time, there are likely to be some exceptional cases in which the informa-tion provided by a black incumbent confirms white fears. Marion Barry’s tenure inWashington, DC, for example, probably did little to improve whites’ views of blackleadership.



exaggerated expectations about black leadership in the first place. Thus, itis not clear whether their behavior will change more or less than the behav-ior of those who are relatively uninformed. One could also argue thatlearning under black incumbents should be related to an individual’s ini-tial level of racial prejudice – that the least prejudiced whites will respondmost openly to new information about blacks. But again, because the leastprejudiced individuals are among those least likely to have opposed blackleadership initially, it is not clear whether we should really expect morechange among this group, and, in practice, it is extremely difficult to assesschange in either group. It is almost impossible to evaluate change amongthe least prejudiced without panel data, because without it we do notknow if those individuals who are least prejudiced before the election of ablack leader are the same individuals who are least prejudiced afterward.Likewise, given that surveys rarely include questions about respondents’knowledge of local politics, we cannot know who is more informed aboutlocal events under black leaders.15

learning across cities

According to the information model, in order for whites to change theirminds about blacks and black leadership, they need credible information.They must be able to observe the power of a black leader and connect thatpower to local conditions. In other words, whites must believe that blackshave some measure of control over local events. If, for example, whitesare unsure whether the continued well-being of the white community isdue to the newly elected black mayor or to an obstructionist white citycouncil, they gain little information from the tenure of their mayor, andtheir views and votes are unlikely to change.

The degree of control exercised by a black incumbent should vary sys-tematically with the racial demographics of the city in which that incum-bent holds office. I will explain how black control and hence informationaleffects should vary predictably across three types of cities: minority whitecities, majority white cities, and racially balanced cities.

15 One could substitute educational attainment or knowledge of national politics as proxyfor information about local racial politics, but it is not clear how closely either measureis associated with local knowledge. I did attempt to see if changes in attitudes were morepronounced among whites with more education or higher levels of political knowledge.The analysis, which was similar in form to the analysis of partisan differences that ispresented in Chapter 4, revealed no clear or consistent patterns.



The most credible information regarding the interest and intentionsof black leaders is likely to be found in white minority cities, such asOakland and Newark, and thus it is in such cities that we should findthe greatest amount of change in white attitudes and voting behavior.In white minority cities, the perceived threat from black leaders shouldbe extremely high because whites are outnumbered and a black mayoralvictory is likely to signal a real transfer of political power. If elected, ablack mayor would likely have the support of a large black constituencyas well as the support of other black elected officials. Blacks might nothave control of the city’s economic and business interests, but they wouldvery likely have some control over most of the city’s major political offices(Grofman and Davidson 1994). If a black leader wanted to pursue radicalchanges in policy, that leader would likely have the means to do so andwhite voters would know this. The possibility of such radical change andthe fear that this evokes should convince most whites to vote against anyblack challenger. After a black challenger wins the mayoralty, the blackcommunity seemingly gains the power to advance its agenda. Althoughthis initially increases many whites’ fears of radical social and economicchange, it also allows black leaders to provide clear evidence of their policypreferences and true intentions. When blacks enact agendas that do nothurt whites, whites’ fears should abate. Thus, it is in white minority citiesmore than anywhere else that white voters can draw lessons from blackleadership.

In contrast, black leadership in majority white cities, such as Min-neapolis and Seattle, should provide less information about the under-lying preferences of black leaders, because black officeholders in thesecities have little opportunity to take over the policy-making process, andwhites are aware of that fact. The prospect of a black mayor’s electionshould spark little fear in majority white cities, because whether or notthe black challenger wins the mayoralty, whites will continue to dom-inate the political landscape, and any successful politician will have tocater to white interests. Since the threat most whites perceive from sucha candidate is low, many liberal whites should ignore race and vote forthe black challenger based on his or her nonracial qualifications. Thisseems like good news for the black community, but because whites con-trol the local political arena even after a black mayor enters office, theinformation white voters receive about the black leader’s true preferencesis clouded. They cannot know whether the actions of the black incum-bent are designed to serve black interests or simply to placate the largerwhite community. The absence of any real change in white well-being



under a black mayor may convince some white residents that they havelittle to fear from this black leader, but other white voters will dismissthe mayor’s record on the ground that whites remained largely in con-trol of the city. Such skeptical white voters will continue to fear the onsetof “real” black political control and to oppose black candidates, whilethe white voters who supported the black challenger in the first place willcontinue to support black leaders. In majority white cities, then, the infor-mation model predicts that changes in white beliefs and behavior will bemoderate.

Racially balanced cities, such as Chicago and New York, representa third distinct racial environment. What sets racially balanced citiesapart from other cities is their proximity to a racial tipping point. Incities where blacks have about half of all registered voters, a significantnumber of important political offices, and other resources, the electionof a black mayor may be all it takes for the black community to gainpolitical control.16 This has important implications for the informationwhites receive from black leadership, the level of white uncertainty regard-ing future elections, and consequently the behavior of white elites. First,proximity to a racial tipping point should spark intensified oppositionfrom white elites, who believe that losing control of local politics willmean losing access to their jobs and livelihoods. Thus, in racially balancedcities, black mayors should have a particularly difficult time getting theiragendas enacted due to resistance from the officeholding white elite. Eachaction by a black mayor is likely to be followed by a counter action bymembers of the white elite. As a result, few of the policies advocated bya black mayor are likely to be enacted. Since black mayors are blockedfrom achieving their goals, white voters receive little new informationfrom these mayors’ tenure in office, and learning is limited. Proximityto the racial tipping point also leads to considerable uncertainty amongwhite residents about the future course of local politics. If blacks cangain control of the local political arena at any point, every election coulddetermine whether a black-led coalition or a white-led coalition will con-trol the local political arena. With limited learning from the first termof a black mayor and with blacks that much closer to actually takingover, whites who originally feared black leadership should be even more

16 Black city council representation is closely correlated with the percentage of blacks in acity. In the racially balanced cities examined in this book, blacks held, on average, a thirdof the council seats at the time of the transition to a black mayoralty. This means that withsome support from white liberals (or in some cases Latinos and Asian Americans), theblack-led coalition probably controlled close to half of the city’s major political offices.



pronounced in their opposition and white voters should continue to voteagainst the black incumbent in large numbers. In these racially balancedcities, white opposition should not decline and elections should continueto be racially charged and competitive affairs. In sum, then, the infor-mation model forecasts that the most pronounced and positive changein white attitudes and votes should occur in minority white cities, withmore moderate positive change in majority white cities and little positivechange – or even negative change – in racially balanced cities.

existing research

Unfortunately, at this point we know very little about white reactions tominority representation across the United States. The evidence to date issparse, anecdotal, and often inconsistent. One can find cases to supporteach of the three different theoretical claims described here.

The earliest reports on black mayors and perhaps the bulk of reports onall black leaders point to the positive effects of black leadership on whiteresidents and fit closely with an information model of white behavior.In one of the first assessments of white reactions to black incumbents,Peter Eisinger found, for example, that white elites in Atlanta and Detroit“responded initially to the prospect of transition with fear, but livingunder black government brought gradual and widespread acceptance”(1980: 75). Another study considered white voting in two mayoral elec-tions each in eight cities and found that white support for black candidatesjumped markedly after blacks became incumbents (Watson 1984). In per-haps the starkest case, in Los Angeles, Tom Bradley, began his tenure with62 percent of whites opposing his candidacy amidst widespread concernsthat the black mayor would hurt the white community. He ended hiscareer twenty years later, after winning reelection five times – each timewith the majority of LA’s white voters offering him their support (Sonen-shein 1993). A number of other accounts of a single black incumbent orof voting patterns in a series of local elections in one city have also con-cluded that incumbency increases white crossover voting for black candi-dates (Vanderleeuw 1991; Stein and Kohfeld 1991; Bullock and Campbell1984; Pettigrew 1976; J. Franklin 1989; Persons 1993). Surveying thesefindings, Colburn recently claimed that “the more often blacks served inprominent political positions and as mayors, the more acceptable theywere to whites” (Colburn and Adler 2003: 40). This positive turnaroundin the white vote across these cases seems to offer support for an infor-mation model of white political behavior.



There are, however, important exceptions to this pattern of growingwhite support for black incumbents. Reports from the late 1980s and early1990s tended to be much less sanguine about white acceptance of blackleadership. Accounts of politics in several cities seemed to affirm a whitebacklash model more than an information model (Rivlin 1992; Abneyand Hutcheson 1981; Grimshaw 1992; Pinderhughes 1994). In Chicago,for example, Harold Washington’s election as the first black mayor of thecity seemed to lead to more rather than less racial conflict (Rivlin 1992).The Wall Street Journal noted that Chicago had been transformed duringWashington’s tenure from “the city that works” to “Beirut on the lake”.Public opinion data in Atlanta similarly suggest that the election of ablack mayor led to increased rather than decreased distrust among whites(Abney and Hutcheson 1981). When, amid severe racial tensions, blackincumbents lost a series of reelection bids in the nation’s largest cities,many thought “the end of the rainbow” had occurred (Sleeper 1993).Observers saw these incumbent defeats as a sign that whites ultimatelywould not accept black leadership (Rivlin 1992; Holli and Green 1989;Browning, Marshall, and Tabb 1997).

Still other studies, particularly those that focus on congressional elec-tions, appear to demonstrate little or no reaction to black incumbents(Bullock and Dunn 1999; Gilliam 1996; Bobo and Gilliam 1990; Gay1999; Parent and Shrum 1986, Voss and Lublin 2001). Studies that havefollowed a number of black congressional candidates as they move fromcompeting as challengers to running as incumbents have found that theirwhite support has remained relatively stable (Bullock and Dunn 1999;Gay 1999). The same type of nonreaction has been repeated in severalcities, for example New Orleans where the presence of a black mayorappears to have had little impact on either race relations or white vot-ing patterns (Gilliam 1996; Bobo and Gilliam 1990; Parent and Shrum1986). This white nonresponse offers at least some support for a racialprejudice view of white Americans. Thus, while it looks like white Amer-icans are usually responding positively to black leadership, the evidenceis somewhat inconsistent.

The main problem is that most of this evidence is anecdotal. Studieshave tended to focus on a particular individual or city and to general-ize from these single cases. We have few quantitative estimates of blackincumbent success rates across a range of cases. As that is the case, itis difficult to make claims about the “average” white reaction to expe-rience with black leadership. Another real problem is that most existingstudies have failed to distinguish between black challengers and black



incumbents. Since all black candidates are simply lumped together, thereis no way to tell whether black incumbents do better than similar blackchallengers. As a result, we really do not know whether race declines inimportance after blacks are elected to office.

improving on existing research

There are two main goals to the empirical analysis that follows. The firstis simply to offer a broader, more representative account of how whiteAmericans respond to black representation. Given the anecdotal natureof previous studies, it is imperative that we get an overall picture of howwhites respond to their experiences with black leadership. The secondempirical goal is to test the information model. Is information the keyto understanding the impact of black representation, or is some othermechanism such as social dominance or racial prejudice at play whenAfrican Americans enter office?

Fortunately, these two empirical goals can be achieved by focusingon the same set of empirical tests. First, to provide a broad picture ofhow black leadership affects white political behavior, I need to assesschange not on one measure as past studies have tended to do but insteadon an array of key indicators. Therefore, I focus on change across twosets of important measures: white voting patterns and white racial atti-tudes. These two measures assess critical but different features of thewhite response to black leadership. The vote, because it determines elec-tion outcomes and the distribution of a wide array of public resources, isthe most direct and telling measure of white willingness to support blackleadership. Racial attitudes, because they provide us with a glimpse intowhat white Americans are thinking about blacks and black leadership, arethe most direct and telling measure of the underlying motivations of thewhite community. Change on one measure alone could be viewed by someobservers as ambiguous, but change on both measures is clear. If blackrepresentation leads to a positive change both in white voting behaviorand in white racial attitudes, then we know that black leadership has ledto a positive and meaningful transformation of the white community.

To address the second goal of testing the information model, I needto test a prediction that it uniquely and necessarily makes. Fortunately,the predictions made by the information model contrast with the predic-tions made by any other mainstream theories. If the information modelis true and white residents do learn from black representation, then twochanges in white behavior must logically follow. Whites will become more



willing to vote for black leadership and white attitudes toward blackswill improve. No other theory predicts this pattern of white reactions. Ifprejudice is the main force driving white behavior, then one would pre-dict little or no change on either the white vote or white attitudes. Asocial dominance perspective predicts that whites should react negativelyto any challenge to the racial status quo. And if we were to make pre-dictions based on previous instances of black leadership (e.g. in the latenineteenth century), we would expect whites to mobilize to try to oustblack leadership.17 Thus, to see if the information model explains whitereactions to black leadership, I can look at the same two measures: whitevoting patterns and white racial attitudes. If black representation leads topositive change on both measures, then we have compelling evidence infavor of the information model.

To accomplish both of these tasks and to systematically assess changesin white political behavior under black representation, I examine threedifferent data sets related to black mayoral leadership. In each case, I donot examine a handful of black representatives in one or two cities – aspast studies have generally done – but instead I examine an entire universeof cases of white reactions to black representation. The primary tool toassess change in the white vote is a series of fifty-two black challenger andblack incumbent elections. Since I want to look at how experience witha black incumbent changes the white vote, I compare and contrast thewhite vote in two elections in each city – the election in which a city electsits first black mayor and the election immediately following, in which thesame black candidate runs for reelection. Also, since I want cases wherewhite voters were forced to choose between black and white leadership,I exclude cities where the black candidate ran against a black opponentin either election. Finally, since I want to be as comprehensive as possibleI include all cases in cities with over 50,000 people that fit this criterion.The two key questions that I try to address with this first data set are: (1)Are white voters more or less likely to support black challengers than theyare to support the same black candidates when they run as incumbents?(2) Does black incumbency at the mayoral level lead to changes in thenature of the white vote? In particular, as time goes by under black lead-ership, is the white vote less governed by racial aspects of the electionand more focused on nonracial factors such as endorsements, candidate

17 Even a pure realistic group conflict model, which might predict a positive change in whitevoting behavior – given that black leadership proved ineffective – would still not predicta positive change in white attitudes.



quality, and the economy? In addition, to see how voters behaved across alarger array of cases and over a longer time period, I examine the outcomeof every reelection bid of every black mayor in cities with over 50,000 res-idents in the twentieth century. The goal here is to show that, across therange of cases, white voters regularly support black incumbents.

The main tool to assess change in white racial attitudes is a series ofnationally representative public opinion surveys conducted by the Ameri-can National Election Study (ANES). With an array of questions on racialattitudes, a sufficiently large sample of white respondents, enough geo-graphic dispersion, and a long time period, the ANES is the only surveythat can be used to assess the effects of black representation on whiteattitudes.Two questions are critical to gauging the impact of black lead-ership. First, controlling for selection effects, do whites who live underblack mayors express less racial fear and less negative views toward blackleadership and the black community than do whites who live in othercities? Second, in cities that have elected a black mayor, is there an appre-ciable change in white attitudes over time? In particular, do white atti-tudes toward blacks and black leadership improve as experience withblack officeholding increases? These main data sets, coupled with othersecondary data, should provide a fairly complete picture of white reac-tions to black mayoral representation and a fairly discerning test of theinformation model.

There are, of course, some limitations to the analysis. Although I amable to measure the white vote and white views at key points before, dur-ing, and after the transition from white to black leadership, I offer lessin the way of direct evidence of the specific information that whites res-idents have about black leaders. Exactly what is it that white residentsdo or do not know about local black leadership at different points intime? Strictly speaking, this kind of evidence is not required to test theinformation model but this kind of data might help to give us a moredetailed understanding of the learning process. Unfortunately, the selec-tion of survey data asking whites what they did or did not know aboutdifferent aspects of black leadership at different points in time is quitelimited and exists in only a few cities. Nevertheless, I do utilize the datathat are available in the book. As I detailed earlier in this chapter, sur-vey data not only strongly suggest that most white residents know if theyhave a black mayor but also that they are quite willing to offer evalua-tions of local conditions and mayoral performance. As Chapters 5 and 6

will demonstrate, these evaluations have a substantial impact on mayoralapproval (see also Stein, Ulbig, and Post 2005; Howell and Perry 2004;



and Howell and McLean 2001). In addition to data from larger surveys,I also present data from a range of interviews with a number of whiteresidents in a variety of cities. These interviews do not emerge out of arandom sample design but they nevertheless indicate what it is that manywhites fear before black leaders are elected and more importantly howthose fears decline as the years under black leadership go by. Finally, Ialso attempt to tie the political behavior of white residents more directlyto the actions of black leadership by matching changes in local conditionsunder black mayoral leadership to changes in the views of white residentsover time in two in-depth case studies of Los Angeles and Chicago.

The other main limitation of the analysis is that I could not follow arepresentative set of individuals as they experienced the transition fromwhite to black leadership. As beneficial as such panel data would be toassess change over time, they are simply not available. Instead, I use twoalternate types of analyses to assess change over time. To measure changesin the white vote, I focus on aggregate rather than individual data. Usingthis aggregate data I can easily compare the white vote at different pointsover the course of black leadership and note any changes that occurover time. To measure changes in white attitudes using pooled individualdata, I develop a set of more complex methodological tests that attemptto isolate the effects of black leadership. Specifically, I develop a two-stage least-squares model that controls for selection of individuals into aparticular city and I incorporate in that model a range of factors other thanblack leadership that might influence white attitudes. In addition, to assesschanges over time in white views, I not only compare white attitudes inblack-led cities to white attitudes in white-led cities, I also compare whiteattitudes early in a black mayor’s tenure to white attitudes in the latteryears of a city’s experience with black mayoral leadership – a comparisonthat allows me to get reasonably close to measuring change over time.Finally, in the analysis of both the white vote and white racial attitudes, Iexplicitly control for changes in voter turnout and out-migration to helpensure that the changes we see under black leadership are real. No datain social science, short of experiments, can prove a temporal or causalconnection with absolute certainty, but the tools that I employ shouldprovide a fairly accurate assessment of the changes that occur over timeunder black representation.

Another potential concern is selection bias. If the cities that elect blackmayors are cities where white residents are especially tolerant or citieswhere whites are on the cusp of accepting black leadership, it is possiblethat the positive change we see under black representation is the result



of selection and not a sign of a real change in white political behavior.There are a number of factors that indicate that selection bias is not asignificant problem in this case. Many of these are discussed in Chapters 2

and 3 but several are worth highlighting here. The most obvious reasonto discount this selection hypothesis is the strongly negative reactions ofthe vast majority of white residents to the candidacies of black mayoralchallengers. Some 70 percent of all whites voted against the successfulblack challenger in the cities that I examine. Many of these white voterswere quite willing to express their animosity toward black leadership andtheir fears about what would happen if blacks gained control. In abouthalf of these cities, whites turned out at record or near record rates to tryto prevent a black victory. Moreover, as Chapter 2 will show, when whitesvoted in these elections, racial concerns all but determined the white votein these cities. Clearly, in the cities that did elect black mayors, most whiteresidents were far from ready to support black leadership. Another reasonto doubt the selection hypothesis is the fact that an examination of surveysby the ANES shows that the racial attitudes of white residents in citiesprior to the election of a black mayor were not appreciably different fromthe racial attitudes of whites in cities that were not about to elect a blackmayor. Put another way, whites in cities that elect black mayors for thefirst time are similar to whites in cities that do not elect black mayors.Third, the available evidence suggests that a particularly racially tolerantwhite population is generally not the main reason for the election of ablack mayor (Karnig and Welch 1980). In fact, the presence of a blackmayor has much more to do with the size and resources of the local blackcommunity than with the nature of the local white community (Karnig andWelch 1980). Finally, when I do assess changes in white racial attitudes, Iundertake a series of tests to help ensure that changes in white views arenot due to selection bias. The first and most important tool is the use ofa two-stage least-squares model that directly controls for selection intocities with black mayoral leadership. In addition, I look to see if the changein white views under black mayors is evident even when I only includewhites from cities that have elected a black mayor at some point in theirhistory. By confining the analysis to whites who live in cities that haveor will elect black mayors, any change in white attitudes that is evidentduring the years when a black incumbent is in power cannot be due toespecially racially tolerant cities electing a black mayor since all of thecities in the analysis elect black mayors. Also, as previously noted, whenassessing changes in white views, I compare white views early in the tenureof a black mayor to white views later in the tenure of a black mayor. This



additional test indicates that even when the analysis is confined to whiteswho currently live under a black mayor, there is a marked improvementin white views over the tenure of the black mayor – a change that is notlikely to be due to especially racially tolerant cities electing black mayors.Combined, these points strongly suggest that the changes we see underblack mayors are real.


2

The Transformation of the White Vote

In this chapter, I begin to assess how experience with black leadershipaffects whites’ political behavior. The goal of the first part of the chapteris to offer a test of the three competing explanations of white voter behav-ior developed in Chapter 1. If the information model is accurate, whiteAmericans should be more supportive of black incumbents than of blackchallengers. If the predictions of the white backlash model are correct,whites’ opposition to black incumbents should increase with time. And ifthe racial prejudice model is accurate, the white vote should be relativelyunaffected by black leaders’ incumbency. The results of this first test arefairly clear: white voters are significantly more willing to support the sameblack candidate when he or she runs as an incumbent. Regardless of whothey face or where they run, black incumbents usually win re-election.

This first test cannot tell us why white voters change their minds aboutblack candidates, of course. This is an important omission, because thereare a number of reasons why black incumbents might get more whitesupport than black challengers. After all, most candidates, black or white,are able to garner more votes when they run as incumbents. To addressthis issue and, more importantly, to see if racial learning plays a role inincreasing white support for black incumbents, I will look more deeplyat the nature of the white vote in black challenger and black incumbentelections in the second part of the chapter. If the information model iscorrect, we should find black incumbent contests to be somewhat lessracialized: threat should play a diminished role in the vote of a significantportion of white voters, and conventional nonracial factors should re-emerge as critical considerations. The results of this second test show thatin black incumbent elections, white voting patterns more closely resemble

38


The Transformation of the White Vote 39

the norm than they do in black challenger elections: turnout declines toaverage levels, racial considerations seem to diminish, and traditionallyimportant electoral influences such as endorsements and candidate qualityre-emerge as central factors in the white vote.

The results of both of these tests support the information model. But ifthe model is accurate, some of the positive information that whites obtainfrom watching black incumbents around the country should be relevantwhen new black challengers enter the political arena. Over time, whitesshould grow less fearful of new black challengers, and they should be morewilling to vote for these candidates. Since black leadership is certainlynot the only new element affecting white votes over time, my test ofthis hypothesis is at best suggestive. Nevertheless, the results of this test,too, support the information model, as the information whites acquireabout blacks in one place does appear to affect outcomes in other contestsin other locations. Combined, these three tests would seem to indicatethat black leadership does provide many white Americans with criticalinformation that allays their fears and reduces the significance of race insubsequent local elections. Before turning to the tests and analysis of theirresults, I want to first provide a brief review of the existing literature onwhite voting in biracial contests.

will whites vote black?

Scholars, activists, and judges have all given enormous attention to thesimple question “Will whites vote black?” For many, it is the central ques-tion in discussions of minority rights in this country. Despite the attentionthat has been given to this question – or perhaps because of it – existingscholarship has provided no clear answer. Some scholars are now con-vinced that whites will vote black. They cite public opinion surveys inwhich white respondents overwhelmingly report that they are willing tosupport black candidates, and they point out that the list of African Amer-icans who have won office in primarily white states, districts, and cities isimpressive.1 They also emphasize exit poll data from a range of congres-sional and gubernatorial elections that suggest race is no more an issue inbiracial elections than it is in other electoral contests in America (Highton2004; Citrin, Green, and Sears 1990). Several scholars have gone so far as

1 When asked if they would vote for a “qualified black candidate for president,” over 90%of white respondents answer yes (Schuman et al. 1997). The number of whites who saythey would vote black are even higher for other political offices (Williams 1990).



to interpret these results as a sign that race is largely irrelevant in biracialcontests (Thernstrom and Thernstrom 1997; Thernstrom 1987; Swain1995). As Abigail and Stephen Thernstrom claimed in 1997, “whites arevoting black – in increasing numbers – to a degree that was unimaginable30 years ago” (Thernstrom and Thernstrom 1997: 295).

But others have reached a very different conclusion. When given thechoice between a white candidate and a black candidate, these scholarsmaintain, the vast majority of white voters will embrace the candidateof their own race. There is considerable evidence to support this view.Studies that have examined electoral outcomes in hundreds of contestssuggest that in a typical biracial contest one can expect an average of70 to 90% of white voters to vote white (McCrary 1990; Bullock andDunn 1999; Henry 1987; Stein and Kohfeld 1991; Loewen 1990; Bullock1984; O’Loughlin 1979; Murray and Vedlitz 1978; Black and Black 1973;Lieske and Hillard 1984; Sheffield and Hadley 1984).2 Moreover, theseand similar studies find that the more important the office, the fewerwhites are willing to vote for a black candidate to fill it (Stein and Kohfeld1991; Williams 1990; Bullock 1984). The geographic distribution of blackelected officials also strongly hints at an ongoing aversion to black candi-dates on the part of white voters. Today, roughly 80 percent of all blackelected officials are elected by majority black electorates (Canon 1999;Handley and Grofman 1994; Hedge, Button, and Spear 1992; Campbelland Feagin 1984). Even though 70 percent of all blacks live in state andfederal districts that are majority white, only about 1 percent of all major-ity white districts have ever elected a black official (Handley and Grofman1994). The clear implication is that whites will not vote black and that raceremains central in the minds of white voters. Accordingly, many schol-ars believe that race and racial prejudice remain the primary factor inAmerican politics (Reeves 1997; McCrary 1990; Huckfeldt and Kohfeld1989).

How can scholars reach such starkly different conclusions about therole of race in American politics? The answer is that all black candidatesare not equal in the minds of white voters. A sharp distinction should bemade between black challengers on one hand and black incumbents on

2 Findings in experimental studies are slightly more mixed. Some studies have found thatwhites support a black candidate as much or more often than an equivalent white can-didate (Sigelman et al. 1995; Colleau et al. 1990), but others have found that race, skincolor, and individual racial prejudice all affect voting (Terkildsen 1993). There are alsosigns that whites appear to be hiding their intentions. In one experiment, the proportionof whites stating that they were undecided doubled in biracial contests (Reeves 1997).



the other. For white voters, black challengers represent uncertainty, fear,and, often, a racial threat; if whites do not know how black leadership willaffect them, they will generally choose to vote white. Black incumbents,by contrast, are likely to be relatively well-known commodities – theyhave a record, and in all but a few cases that record allays fears about theconsequences of black leadership. With this new, reassuring information,whites become much more willing to support black incumbents. Thus,it would not be surprising to find that those studies that reach positiveconclusions about white willingness to support black candidates often doso because they tend to focus almost exclusively on black incumbents.Similarly, those that offer more pessimistic accounts of American racerelations and white willingness to vote for African American candidatesdo so, perhaps, because they tend to focus on black challengers. Unfortu-nately, since almost all of the existing research on racial politics has failedto take into account the important distinction between challengers andincumbents in data analysis, we do not yet know whether this assumptionis correct.

If this information model is accurate, the critical question is notwhether whites will vote for blacks but under what circumstances they willvote for blacks. And, more specifically, what difference does black incum-bency make? Does experience under black incumbents change the waywhites think about black candidates, make them more willing to supportblack incumbents, and reduce the role of race in biracial electoral contests?

does incumbency matter?

To begin to answer these questions, I collected data on white voting pat-terns in a representative sample of mayoral elections involving black can-didates. I collected these data with two goals in mind. My first goal was toprovide as direct an assessment as possible of the impact of incumbencyon the white vote. To do so, I amassed data on white voting patternsin sets of two mayoral elections in cities that have experienced a transi-tion to black leadership. For each case, I contrast the white vote in thefirst election, in which a black challenger ran successfully against a whiteincumbent to become the first black mayor of the city, with the whitevote in the election immediately following, in which the black mayorran for reelection against a white opponent.3 By comparing sets of two

3 Including cases in which two black candidates run against each other would, obviously,reveal little about white acceptance of black leadership.



elections that involve the same black candidates, I am able to assess theeffects of incumbency on the white vote directly. I confine my analysis togeneral or run-off elections rather than primaries to avoid complicationsintroduced by multiple candidacies and voter disinterest. To analyze otheraspects of the electoral outcome, I also collected data on overall turnoutand the margin of victory in each election. A detailed account of eachof the variables and its sources is described in the statistical appendix toChapter 2.

My second goal was to be as comprehensive as possible in order toensure that the results of the data analysis are representative. Since allprevious studies had considered only a small number of cases, I decidedto create a complete data set that included all relevant cases across thecountry. To do this, I compiled a set of the entire universe of cases forcities with populations of over 100,000 that fit the criteria just outlined.In total, there were fifty-two elections in twenty-six cities. While this isadmittedly a small number, it represents two-thirds of the cases of white-black transition in large American cities. What is happening in this set ofcases, then, should be more or less what happens generally when a whitemayor is replaced by a black mayor in a large American city.

It is also important to note that my selection criteria do not appearto have created a set of cities with exceptionally liberal or especiallyracially tolerant white populations. Although some of the cities, such asSan Francisco, Minneapolis, and Seattle, are generally seen as liberal, oth-ers, including Memphis, Birmingham, and Houston, would be much morelikely to be labeled conservative, and still others, Durham and Hartford,for example, fall somewhere in the middle. As we will see, most whitesin these cities were not ready for black leadership and not particularlyracially tolerant when black candidates were trying to win the mayoraltyfor the first time. On the contrary, black challengers in many of these citiesfaced nearly unanimous opposition. And, in many cases, whites turnedout in record numbers to try to prevent a black victory. In fact, a compar-ison of the racial attitudes of white residents in these cities prior to theelection of a black mayor with the racial attitudes of white residents inother cities using the survey data from the ANES (presented in Chapter 3)found no consistent or substantial differences in white views. For thesecities, the key to black victory was the black vote, not white support. Thiscomports with existing research that suggests that the size of the blackcommunity and the resources of the black community are much moreimportant in determining the success of black candidates than the natureof the white community (Karnig and Welch 1980).



table 2.1 Voting Patterns in Black Challenger and BlackIncumbent Elections

Black Challenger Black Incumbent

White Voters for Black Candidate (%) 30 36

Margin of Victory (%) 12 21

Turnout of Registered Voters (%) 59 52

Nevertheless, some caution should be exercised in using this small num-ber of cases to generalize about the importance of black mayoral leader-ship, and differences between the mayoralty and other types of politicaloffice also make generalization about black representation as a wholefrom this set of cases problematic. While sound, the data are suggestiverather than definitive.

To illustrate how white voters respond to black mayoral leadership,Table 2.1 presents a comparison of black challenger and black incum-bent elections. The numbers tell a fairly clear story: when the same blackcandidate runs for reelection for the first time as an incumbent, the propor-tion of white voters who support that candidate grows by an average of6 percentage points, from 30 to 36 percent of all white voters. A six-pointshift in the vote is certainly not unheard of in American elections, andone could argue that this change represents relatively little movement onthe part of white voters. Yet this relatively small change is clearly impor-tant, for if whites were reacting to incumbent black mayors as they haveresponded to other forms of black empowerment in the past, we wouldhave seen the opposite: a white backlash characterized by heightenedmobilization and resistance. Similarly, if prejudice were the main factorbehind white opposition to black candidates, we would most likely see nochange at all. The fact that white support grew, even if by a small amount,is very informative.4

4 It is also worth noting that the increased white willingness to support the same blackcandidate suggests that a fairly large portion of white voters who were motivated by racein the challenger contest had a change of heart in the incumbent contest. If most of thewhite support in the black challenger contests and most of the increase in white supportin the incumbent contests comes from Democrats – a reasonable assumption given that allbut one of the black candidates are self-described Democrats and most advocated at leasta marginally liberal agenda – a shorthand calculation (estimating that half of all whitevoters in these cities are Democrats) indicates that one-quarter of the white Democratswho voted “race” instead of party in the black challenger election reverted to voting alongpartisan lines in the black incumbent election. In other words, a substantial proportionof all racially motivated white voters change their minds after just a few years of blackleadership.



The growth in white support is more impressive when one consid-ers that whites in these cities had only two or four years (depending onthe length of a mayoral term) to experience black leadership. In citieslike Los Angeles and Newark, where the same black mayor ran repeat-edly for reelection, white support grew with each election. According toSonenshein (1993), Tom Bradley’s white support in Los Angeles grew ineach of his first four elections. All told, his white support almost doubledfrom 32 percent in 1969 to 62 percent in 1985. Thus, the six-point shiftmay represent only the first step in growing white acceptance of blackleadership. In addition, this analysis in some ways understates the excep-tional nature of the white support that these black incumbents won. I donot compare the average challenger to the average incumbent but insteadfocus only on the most successful black challengers. Most black chal-lengers lose their electoral bids. Thus, if I had included a cross-section ofall black challengers, the contrast between support for challengers andsupport for incumbents would be much greater. The limited data thatare available attest to this point. In an analysis of a series of city counciland mayoral elections in Atlanta, Bullock (1984) found that incumbencymore than doubled white crossover voting. His findings were echoed inan analysis of the vote in mayoral and council elections in New Orleans(Vanderleeuw 1991).

It is worth noting that the black candidates in the sample gained sub-stantial white support as incumbents despite the fact that they did not getthe boost in electoral resources that most incumbents receive. For mostwhite candidates, incumbency has enormous benefits: it usually meansmore endorsements, more money, and weaker opponents. This is muchless true for the black candidates in my sample.5 Largely because theyneeded tremendous resources to be elected in the first place, the majorityof these twenty-six black candidates garnered few new electoral resourcesas incumbents. In 81 percent of the cases, they received no new Demo-cratic Party endorsement when they ran as incumbents. In 62 percentof the cases, they gained no new endorsements from local newspapers.These black incumbents also tended to face strong white challengers.Also, 62 percent of the incumbents faced opponents who had the same ora higher level of experience than their opponents in the challenger elec-tion. The candidates were able to muster only marginally greater financialresources as incumbents, and one-third actually raised less money thanthey had as challengers. It would make little sense, then, to attribute the

5 Data sources for these comparisons are described in the appendix.



growing white support for these candidates to the conventional resourcesof incumbency.

The six-point increase in the percentage of white residents who votedblack was not the only significant change from the challenger to the incum-bent elections. There was an even sharper decline in the absolute numberof white voters who opposed the black candidates.6 Across all twenty-six cities, the number of white votes for the white candidate declined by19 percent on average between the challenger and the incumbent elec-tions. This result suggests that as many as one-fifth of all white voterswho opposed black leadership may have changed their minds sufficientlyeither to support the black candidate or to choose not to vote at all. Asa consequence of both the drop in voter turnout and the higher level ofsupport for the black incumbents, the incumbents’ average margin of vic-tory jumped from 12 percent in the challenger elections to 21 percent inthe incumbent elections, leading to victory for the black incumbents in allbut three cities.

The final factor to consider is voter turnout. Table 2.1 reveals thatturnout decreased substantially in the black incumbent elections. In a lit-tle over half of the challenger elections, turnout had reached or exceededrecord levels.7 On average, it exceeded the national average by over 10 per-centage points (Hampton and Tate 1996). But this mobilization quicklyfaded away when blacks ran as incumbents: across the twenty-six cities,turnout dropped from almost 59 percent in challenger elections to 52

percent in incumbent elections, falling in many cases to average or belowaverage levels. In Charlotte, for example, where Harvey Gantt faced well-known white Republican city council members in both of his elections,voter turnout fell by over 15 percentage points from 50 percent in Gantt’schallenger run to 34 percent, near the historic norm, in his reelectionbid. From this data, it seems that black incumbency at the mayoral level

6 This assumes that the decrease in support for the white candidate comes from white voters.Two facts make this assumption reasonable. First, there was almost no black support forthe white candidate in any of these elections. Exit polls and precinct analysis of the blackvote indicate that on average 95 percent of black voters supported the challenger and 93

percent supported the incumbent. Also, across the cities, there are few voters who areneither black nor white. Blacks and whites combined make up 92% of the population inthese twenty-six cities.

7 Although Table 2.1 only presents aggregate turnout rates, it is clear that white turnoutrates follow the same pattern. In cities where turnout figures are available for whitesand African Americans separately, the numbers suggest that both groups turn out inlarge numbers in challenger elections and in considerably smaller numbers in incumbentelections.



transforms extraordinary black challenger elections into more ordinarycontests for reelection.

The opposition that the black challengers faced was by no means totallyerased when they ran as incumbents, of course. The data in Table 2.1indicate that large numbers of white voters continued to oppose the blackincumbents. But in the average case, after a few years of black incumbency,white Americans became more accepting of black leadership. Again, themost remarkable aspect of this shift was not its size but the fact that therewas any positive change at all. Peter Eisinger noted, in his study of Atlantaand Detroit, how sharply the elections of black representatives in thosecities contrasted with expectations: “What has occurred is particularlynoteworthy when it is set against the history of race relations in thosetwo cities themselves, against the habits of racial oppression in Americansociety in general, and indeed against a virtually worldwide tendency todeal with ethno-racial political competition by violent means” (Eisinger1980: xxi). In many cities, even city residents themselves seemed surprisedat their mayoral election’s outcome. As one reporter in Birmingham put it,“This city, once branded by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as ‘the mostthoroughly segregated in America,’ accomplished something Tuesday thatmany of its residents consider remarkable: it reelected its first black mayorwith a biracial coalition and the largest victory margin in city history”(Russakoff 1983). The fact that whites’ anti-black mobilization declinedafter only a few years and significantly more whites became willing tosupport black leadership was not only a positive sign for race relations inthese cities, then – it was a positive change that many did not foresee.

A Broader Phenomenon: All Incumbent Black Mayors

The changes in white voter behavior noted above may be unique to thetwenty-six cities in the data set or limited to the first few years of blackleadership. To assess black incumbency more broadly, I collected data onthe reelection bids that took place in the twentieth century of every blackincumbent mayor in every city with a population over 50,000.8 In eachcase, in addition to the outcome of the contest, I obtained information

8 This data set was compiled using the National Roster of Black Elected Officials, localnewspaper reports in each city, and a data set of mayoral names (Wolman, Strate, andMelchior 1996), and it includes the race of the mayor, the challenger, and the winner. Asin the first data set, I focus on general or run-off elections rather than primaries, wherefactors such as multiple candidacies, lack of interest, and limited availability of empiricaldata complicate empirical analysis.



on the racial makeup of the city, the race of the opponent, the number ofterms the incumbent had been in office, and the number of black mayorswho had previously served in the city.

The findings from my analysis of this larger set of cases echo the resultsfor the twenty-six cities. First, black incumbents won in the vast majorityof the cases. Since 1965, black mayors have won 78 percent of theirreelection bids (98 out of 126 cases). In fact, depending on the exactcomparison, black incumbents do almost as well as or even better thanwhite incumbents. Between 1970 and 1985, the only period for whichI was able to obtain equivalent data for both black and white mayoralincumbents, black mayors were reelected 89 percent of the time (31 outof 35 cases), a slightly higher rate than white mayors, who were reelected84 percent of the time (359 out of 429 cases). From this data, it wouldseem that black and white incumbents are treated almost equally by theAmerican electorate.

Second, there was no sharp decline in black reelection rates over time,and thus little indication that the information provided by black incum-bents was losing efficacy over time. Although the first African Americansto serve as mayors of their cities were particularly successful when theyran as incumbents for the first time (winning 83 percent of these reelectionbids), they also did well in subsequent electoral bids, winning 74 percentof the time. Equally important, there does not appear to be a major dis-tinction in success rates between the first black mayor of a city and otherswho follow. The overall reelection rate of cities’ first black mayors (80 per-cent) by no means dwarfs the reelection rate of subsequent black mayors(73 percent).

But does the success of black incumbents have anything to do withwhite voters? After all, the majority of black mayors represent minoritywhite cities. Given the fact that black voters tend to favor black candidatesover white candidates, the success of black incumbents could merely be anartifact of black unity and voting strength and not the result of increasingwhite support (McCrary 1990). But this appears not to be the case: if weconfine the analysis to minority black cities, where white voters presum-ably have a good chance of controlling the outcome of the contests, blackincumbents still do well. Black mayoral incumbents in minority blackcities won reelection over 80 percent of the time, only marginally belowthe overall white incumbent reelection rate. Moreover, black incumbentsdid not win these contests simply because white voters were forced tochoose between two black candidates. Even in minority black cities in elec-tions in which black incumbents faced a white challenger, black mayoral



incumbents won reelection 73 percent of the time (19 of 26 cases). In fact,black incumbents actually did better against white candidates then theydid against black candidates.

It is also worth noting that the pattern of declining turnout that wasevident in the twenty-six black challenger/black incumbent elections canbe found across the wider range of cases. In an analysis of a broad sampleof mayoral elections in large American cities, Hampton and Tate (1996)found that the mere presence of an African American candidate in thecontest raised turnout by 10 points over the national average. But thischanged when blacks ran as incumbents. The same data show that hav-ing a black incumbent in the contest actually lowered turnout by 4 percent(Lublin and Tate 1995). Black challengers spark extraordinary mobiliza-tion, while black incumbents seem to spark only average interest.

the shifting calculus of the white vote

Across a wide range of cases and on a number of different measures,black mayoral leadership appears to lead to positive changes in whitepolitical behavior. These positive changes seem to favor the informationmodel over both the backlash and the prejudice hypotheses, but they donot themselves demonstrate racial learning on the part of white voters.There are a number of possible reasons why black incumbents mightbe successful and why white voters might change their minds aboutblack leadership. Most officeholders, whether they are white or black,get more support when they run as incumbents. To see if race and raciallearning are behind the changes in the white vote observed in the data,more tests are required. In this section, I begin to examine the natureof the white vote more closely to see if the change in the vote can belinked to information. If the information model is accurate, we shouldsee a distinct pattern emerge: in black challenger elections, the white voteshould be largely based on racial fears; in black incumbent elections, fearshould play a diminished role, and white voters should begin to basetheir votes on the track record of the incumbent and the specifics of thecampaign.

I collected an array of data on the campaigns and candidates for eachof the fifty-two elections in the original set of twenty-six cities. To assessthe role of race and fear in each contest, I included two different kinds ofmeasures. First, I used a measure of the black population size as a proxyfor racial threat. The size of the black population is regularly employedas a measure of racial threat, and in a wide range of cases white political



choices have been shown to be shaped by the local racial context (Gilesand Hertz 1994; Key 1949). If fears about the consequences of blackleadership are in fact driving the white vote in black challenger elections,we should find that white voters’ preferences are closely tied to the size ofthe black community. The larger the black population and the more likelyit is that blacks could actually gain control of the local political arena, themore we should see whites fearing black leadership and voting againstblack candidates.

Second, I included a measure of the racialization of each black candi-date’s campaign. If fear about racial change is behind white opposition,then what black candidates do or say regarding racial policy should alsoaffect the white vote. The less black candidates talk about serving the blackcommunity and the more they run deracialized campaigns that promise arace-neutral administration, the less fear there should be in the minds ofwhite voters and the more likely it should be that white voters will sup-port black candidates.9 To measure the racialization of a given campaign,I coded the extent to which the black candidates’ speeches, policy plat-forms, and mobilization efforts were targeted at blacks, whites, or both.This is admittedly a subjective measure, but in practice it was fairly easyto divide campaigns into three categories: campaigns that had any sortof explicit, pro-black focus; campaigns that addressed the black commu-nity implicitly through a generally pro-black policy agenda or by activelymobilizing black voters and speaking before black audiences; and cam-paigns that never mentioned black interests and were fairly race neutral.10

A comparison of the racialization measure employed in this study with a

9 This type of deracialization hypothesis has been the subject of a lengthy debate, withsome believing that deracialization is a critical strategy for black candidates and othersmaintaining that it is impossible for black candidates to effectively downplay the signifi-cance of race (C. Hamilton 1977; Henry 1992; Perry 1996; but see Starks 1991; Wright1996).

10 In practice, most black candidates ran dual campaigns, using different tactics and address-ing different issues depending on the racial makeup of their audiences. Few campaignswere overtly racial. Fewer still were clearly race neutral. In the end, the range of campaignswas not that wide. Tom Bradley, who is seen as having the quintessential deracializedcampaign talked about affirmative action and the problems of the black community. Onthe opposite end of the spectrum, Harold Washington did make the famous “It’s ourturn” comment, but the vast majority of the time he avoided mentioning black interestsand instead talked repeatedly about white interests, about serving the whole city, andabout such issues as reform that primarily interested white liberals. Very few campaignswere coded as explicitly racially focused. In black challenger campaigns, there was aneven split between implicitly pro-black and race-neutral campaigns. In black incumbentelections, race-neutral campaigns were a slight majority.



similar measure used in Lublin and Tate (1995) suggests that the coding isvalid.11 If the information model is accurate, this measure should have abigger effect on the white vote in black challenger elections than in blackincumbent elections.

If whites cease to fear the consequences of a black takeover, conven-tional nonracial factors that are normally important determinants of elec-toral outcomes should begin to play a more significant role in black incum-bent elections. To see if this is the case, I examine the extent to which threebasic factors of the electoral context affect the white vote in black chal-lenger and black incumbent elections: candidate quality, political endorse-ments, and campaign spending. In contests at almost every level of politics,each of these factors has proven to be critical to electoral outcomes. More-qualified candidates – with quality generally measured in terms of politicalexperience – surpass the electoral fortunes of less-experienced candidatesat both the congressional and local levels (Jacobson and Kernell 1981;Krasno and Green 1988; Lieske 1989; Krebs 1998).12 Similarly, majorendorsements have been shown to play a primary role in most local con-tests. In particular, both political party endorsements and city newspa-per endorsements affect voting in local elections (Bullock 1984; Lieske1989; Krebs 1998). Finally, campaign spending has been closely linkedto the electoral fortunes of candidates from presidents all the way downto city council members (Arrington and Ingalls 1984; Krebs 1998; Greenand Krasno 1988; Jacobson 1980; Cox and Munger 1989; Gierzynski1998). Candidates who are able to outspend their opponents by widemargins seem to be much more likely to win at the polls.13 Measuresof each of these factors are fairly straightforward and are detailed inAppendix A.

11 Coding from the current data set was compared to the coding of a similar variable fromthe Race and Urban Politics Data set (RUPD), a data set covering 315 mayoral electionsin twenty-six large cities. The RUPD variable, which purportedly measured the racialcharacter of a candidate’s campaign, correlated at 0.97 with the racialization measureused here (see Lublin and Tate 1995 for a detailed description of the data set).

12 The exact causal relationship between candidate quality and electoral outcomes is, how-ever, likely to be somewhat complex. Strong incumbents often deter quality challengersfrom entering the contest in the first place, which makes an assessment of the causal tiesdifficult (Bond, Covingten, and Fleisher 1985; Jacobson and Kernell 1981).

13 The relationship between money and outcomes is also somewhat complex. Some feel thatchallengers can benefit more from spending than can incumbents (Jacobson and Kernell1981). Others see reciprocal causation: how well a candidate is expected to do effectsthe candidate’s fundraising ability (Goidel and Gross 1994). In light of this first claim, Ilook at the spending of each individual candidate separately and not just at the spendingadvantage of one candidate over another.



table 2.2 Determinants of the White Vote in Black ChallengerElections

White Support for theBlack Candidate

RACIAL FEARPercentage Black of City Population −0.72 (0.13)∗∗∗

Racialization of Black Candidate’s Campaign −0.58 (0.26)∗

CONVENTIONAL POLITICSCandidate QualityQuality of White Opponent 0.01 (0.08)White Incumbent Running −0.09 (0.07)Quality of Black Challenger −0.05 (0.08)EndorsementsDemocratic Party Endorsement 0.02 (0.05)Local Newspaper Endorsement 0.01 (0.05)Constant 0.64 (0.11)∗∗∗

Adj. R-squared 0.67

N 25

Note: OLS regression. Figures in parentheses are standard errors.∗∗∗p < 0.01

∗∗p < 0.05

∗p < 0.10

The Importance of Race in Black Challenger Elections

In Table 2.2, I begin to test these propositions by analyzing the aggregatewhite vote in black challenger elections. Although the number of casesis relatively small and is not necessarily representative of all Americancities, the table does reveal a stark, clear pattern. As predicted by theinformation model, when black candidates challenged for the mayoraltyfor the first time, the aggregate white vote was tied almost exclusively toracial fears.

The first measure of racial fear indicates that the larger the blackpopulation in the cities in the sample – and hence the greater the perceivedthreat that blacks would gain some measure of control over the localpolitical arena – the less willing whites were to support a black challenger.The size of the black population accounts for the bulk of the variation inaggregate white behavior; by itself, it accounts for 60 percent of the vari-ation in white vote choice. Even considering the selection bias inherent inthese cases, it is impressive how closely the white vote was tied to the sizeof a city’s black population. In the five cities with the highest proportionof African Americans, Baltimore, Birmingham, New Orleans, Memphis,



and Newark, on average only 16.9 percent of whites supported the blackchallenger. In contrast, in the five cities where blacks represented thesmallest proportion of the population and thus the smallest threat, a slimmajority of white voters (on average 50.4 percent) supported the blackcandidate. Overall, the regression results indicate that a 10 percentagepoint increase in the proportion of a city’s residents who were black ledto a 7.2 percentage point drop in white support for the black mayoralcandidate.

The importance of racial threat seems to suggest that these challengerelections were less about the candidates or the specifics of the electionthan they were about the size of the threat of a black takeover – a conclu-sion that is echoed over and over again in accounts of the elections. Oneof the most well-known accounts of Birmingham’s election, for example,concluded that “whites worried not so much about Richard ArringtonJr. [the black challenger], but about blacks, the group they believed herepresented. Had that day now come when ‘the last shall be first, and thefirst shall be last?’” (J. Franklin 1989: 172). The transition was viewedvery similarly in Atlanta, where Peter Eisinger found that “the change wasunderstood not in terms of a turnover in the personnel of city hall butas a loss by one race to the other” (1980: 154). Wilbur Rich’s account ofDetroit reached the same conclusion: “Many white residents of Detroitresponded to the 1973 election of Coleman Young with intense apprehen-sions and fear. . . . Many whites saw the race as the last stand before thetakeover by the onrushing black majority” (1987: 208).

The role played by the black candidate’s campaign, and in particu-lar white voters’ aversion to racially focused campaigns, also serves toconfirm the critical importance of racial fears in these black challengerelections. What black candidates did or did not say about the interestsof blacks apparently influenced the white vote in these contests. All elsebeing equal, black challengers who ran essentially race-neutral campaignsgarnered almost 60 percent more of the white vote than challengers whoran racially explicit campaigns. Even though all of the twenty-six blackchallengers tried in some way to assure white residents that they would notbe ignored, white voters seemingly keyed in on small differences betweencampaigns. Thus, a candidate like Harold Washington probably lost sub-stantial white support as a result of telling a black audience “It’s ourturn,” even though most of his campaign was race neutral. And, at theother end of the spectrum, candidates like Thirman Milner, who emphat-ically told white voters that “there is no such thing as black legislation”and who often repeated his desire to be “mayor of all of Hartford,” seem



to have been rewarded with additional white votes. Candidate CharlesBox recalled that “The key . . . was to take the fear of the unknown out ofthe equation” (quoted in Colburn and Adler 2003). Box was so concernedabout racial fears that he centered his campaign in Rockford on havingpersonal interactions with as many white voters as possible.14

In addition to supporting the information model, these findings alsocontribute evidence toward the resolution of two ongoing debates in theliterature on American racial politics. First, the clear negative relationshipbetween white voting behavior and the size of the local black populationin these mayoral elections reaffirms the important role that racial contextplays in American race relations. Existing studies have reached very dif-ferent conclusions about how the increasing presence of racial and ethnicminorities affects the white population. Although most studies have foundthat a larger black population is associated with greater racial antagonism(Key 1949; Murray and Vedlitz 1978; Giles and Hertz 1994; Alt 1994;Taylor M. 1998; Fossett and Kiecolt 1989), several recent works haveconcluded either that there is no relationship at all or that the relation-ship is positive (Welch et al. 2001; Kinder and Mendelberg 1995; Bledsoeet al. 1995; Carsey 1995). The results reported here support the positionthat a proportionately larger black population does represent a racialthreat to white voters.

In addition, the relationship between the racial focus of a campaignand the white vote seems to suggest that deracialization can lead toincreased white support. Again, there has been considerable debate onthis point. Though many have maintained that black candidates can gar-ner white support by deracializing their campaigns (Perry 1991; Nichols1990; C. Hamilton 1977), others disagree. In one of the most exten-sive studies, Wright found that “black [mayoral challengers] in Memphiswere unable to garner significant white crossover support regardless oftheir use of deracialized strategies” (1996: 151). Similarly, Starks contendsthat “There is no way in which a contemporary American campaign canutilize a deracialization electoral strategy and hope to eliminate race as a

14 This phenomenon does not seem to be confined to mayoral candidates. Gubernatorialcandidate Douglas Wilder proclaimed, “I have never been a civil rights activist of anykind” (quoted in Jeffries 1999). Harvey Gantt tried hard to run a nonthreatening, dera-cialized contest in his senatorial bid against Jesse Helms (Wilson 1993). Alan Wheat, oneof the most successful black crossover candidates, was also well aware of white fearsduring his Senate campaign. His campaign coordinator stated, “We knew and they knewthat there is just enough racial discomfort among whites that just showing his face wasenough of a message” (quoted in Sniderman, Swain, and Elms 1995: 10).



factor in that campaign” (1991: 217). But the documented results seem toindicate that whites can be quite sensitive to the kinds of campaigns blackcandidates run. When black candidates move from a racially explicit cam-paign to a less racially focused campaign, they are able to attract greaterwhite support. This might lead some to recommend deracializing blackcampaigns as an effective strategy to increase white support and expandblack representation. It is important to consider, however, whether anygains in white support are large enough to offset a possible erosion ofblack support and black turnout – to say nothing of the restraints onpolicy changes – that most likely accompany deracialized campaigns.15

The Irrelevance of Conventional Political Factors inBlack Challenger Elections

Up to this point, I have detailed the factors that do matter in black chal-lenger elections to show that the uncertainty and racial concerns high-lighted by the information model appear to govern white reactions toblack challengers. An account of the factors that do not matter in thesecontests is, however, just as telling. Looking back at Table 2.2, it is appar-ent that none of the factors generally viewed as being critical to localelectoral outcomes substantially affects the outcome of elections in whichblacks challenge for control of a city’s mayoralty for the first time.

The first of the normally critical electoral variables tested is candi-date quality. The evidence presented here suggests that candidates’ expe-rience did not play a significant role in these black challenger elections:whether black challengers faced an unknown and untested white oppo-nent or someone who was well known and had held a prior office seemsnot to have significantly affected their prospects of winning white sup-port. Chicago provides one of the starkest examples: even though HaroldWashington faced an unknown Republican, Bernard Epton, who beganhis bid with limited campaign experience, no campaign funds, and no

15 Supplementary analysis suggests that the kinds of campaigns black candidates run mayalso be related to the policies that black mayors enact and the voting behavior of the blackcommunity. Among the elections that we looked at, black candidates who deemphasizedrace were also less apt to enact such policies as affirmative action and redistributivespending that might benefit the black community. Deracialized campaigns also appearedto be linked to lower black turnout. Neither of these relationships is particularly robustbut it may be that by shying away from race in their campaigns, black candidates loseblack votes and limit the kinds of policies that they ultimately can enact. In short, blackcandidates may have to walk a fine line between trying to get elected and trying to servethe black community.



organization, 80 percent of white Chicagoans voted for Epton; presum-ably this means that many of them were simply voting against Washington.The election in Newark also appears to illustrate how little white voterscared about the qualifications of the white candidate. In that city, 90

percent of white voters supported the white candidate, Hugh Addonizio,even though he had recently been indicted on multiple counts for havingties to organized crime and was on trial the day of the election. Perhapseven more extraordinary is the fact that the white vote in these biracialelections was unrelated to whether or not the black challenger faced anincumbent. In the nineteen cases in which black challengers ran in anopen-seat contest, they did not do significantly better than in the othersix cases, where they faced a white incumbent.16

Just as white voters were not deterred by the poor qualifications ofwhite candidates, they seemed not to have been positively influenced bythe qualifications of the black challengers. Having held prior office as astate legislator or city council member did little to improve black chal-lengers’ prospects of success. Despite the fact that Ernest Morial had beena state legislator in New Orleans for years and Wilson Goode had beencity manager in Philadelphia in the three years prior to his mayoral bid,both failed to garner more than a quarter of the white vote in their cities.At the opposite end of the spectrum, black challengers such as JamesSharp in Flint and James Usry in Atlantic City, both of whom had held noprevious elected office, did only marginally worse with white voters thantheir more qualified peers.17

Political endorsements – the second traditionally important factortested in Table 2.2 – also do not appear to be significantly tied to thewhite vote in these black challenger elections. Despite the fact that pastresearch has found that newspaper endorsement and party endorsementsgreatly influence the outcomes of local elections, neither had much impacton the white vote when white voters were faced with the prospect of a per-ceived black takeover (Bullock 1984; Lieske 1989; Stein and Fleischmann

16 Other tests also indicate that open-seat contests were in most respects no differentfrom elections in which the black challenger faced a white incumbent. Racial factorswere equally important in both types of contests, and nonracial factors were equallyunimportant.

17 Thus, Niemi and Weisberg may be right about most elections in America when they echothe wisdom of political science and claim “It makes a difference who the candidates are”(1993: 217), but when one candidate is black and vying to take over a position previouslyheld by whites, the only thing that seems to matter about the two candidates is the colorof their skin and the fear that it invokes.



1987; Krebs 1998). Both Kenneth Gibson in Newark and Wilson Goodein Philadelphia won the endorsement of their city’s Democratic Partyorganization and its major newspapers, usually a sure sign of widespreadwhite support in these strongly Democratic cities, but in each case theendorsements were followed by strong white opposition. The same pat-tern held in Detroit. As one reporter described the campaign, the focuswas not on endorsements or campaigns but race: “The unions were for[Coleman Young]. The business and political establishments were for him.The liberal, money-laden suburbs were for him. But when they tallied thevotes, none of that mattered. The only issue that counted when ColemanYoung became Detroit’s first black mayor in 1973 was race” (Cantor1989).

Alternate tests suggest that even the policy platform of the black candi-date’s campaign was not as important as it is normally.18 The liberalism ofthe black candidate’s campaign, as measured by statements about overallpolicy direction and specific policy initiatives in newspaper reports andthe candidate’s speeches, had no clear effect on white support. Whetherpolicy liberalism was included in the model in Table 2.2 or examinedalone, it appeared to have no impact on the decisions of white voters inthese challenger elections.19

The impact of conventional factors is not simply masked by the inclu-sion of other variables: even when both of the racial fear variables areomitted from the regression, none of the remaining independent variablesis significantly related to white voter behavior in black challenger elec-tions. Even simple bivariate tests reveal no clear link between any of the

18 Due to the collinearity between campaign liberalism and the racialization of the blackcandidate’s campaign, the liberalism measure was not included in the final model.

19 Chicago and Philadelphia provide perhaps the starkest example of the irrelevance ofwhat one might call conventional politics in the face of a black mayoral challenge. Eventhough the tone and content of the campaigns in the two cities were almost polar oppo-sites, the outcome in both cases was almost exactly the same. In Chicago in 1983, inwhat has been described as “one of the most racist campaigns outside of the Southernstates” (Alkalimat 1986: 7), Harold Washington’s white opponent, Bernard Epton, ran ahighly charged campaign that centered on the slogan, “Epton Now, Before It’s Too Late.”In sharp contrast, in Philadelphia in the same year the general election had few explicitracial references. Wilson Goode’s white opponent didn’t mention race. Throughout thecampaign, “Philadelphians congratulated themselves, while accepting the plaudits of thenational media, because their contest was free of the open anger that marked Chicago’s”(Kleppner 1985: 250). Yet, despite the contrasting tones, the end result was almost iden-tical. Exit polls indicated that white support for the two black challengers differed byonly 3 percentage points. The vast majority of white voters in both cities chose not tovote for the black candidate.



conventional nonracial factors and the white vote.20 With the possibleexception of campaign spending, where there is some evidence that whitevoting is related to the white opponent’s spending, the data suggest thatwhen a black candidate challenges to become the first black mayor ofa city, all that seems to matter is race and the fear that accompanies aperceived black takeover.21

These black challenger elections stand out not only because they aredifferent from the typical urban contest but also because they are very dif-ferent from previous elections in the same cities. A comparison of thesechallenger elections with previous contests in the same cities indicatesthat in many of these cities voting patterns that had held firm for decadeswere shattered when the possibility of an African American winning themayor’s office became real. Cities with apathetic electorates suddenly wit-nessed record-high turnout levels. In Birmingham, turnout jumped from48 percent to 68 percent when Richard Arrington ran for mayor. Simi-larly, in Seattle, the proportion of registered voters going to the polls rosefrom 41 percent to 60 percent when Norm Rice sought the mayoralty. InCharlotte, when Harvey Gantt ran to become the city’s first black mayor,turnout more than tripled from the previous election, growing from 14

percent to just over 50 percent. Amazingly, in roughly half of the cities inthe sample, including Birmingham, Chicago, Charlotte, Cleveland, Gary,New Orleans, Newark, Memphis, and New Haven, turnout exceeded orcame very close to passing the previous highest level in the city.

Perhaps even more unusual is the way that party allegiances wereignored when white voters faced the possibility of black leadership. Inmany cases, vast numbers of white residents ended decades of supportfor the Democratic Party to support a white Republican (Nelson andMeranto 1977). In Chicago – a city that had not elected a Republican forfifty-six years and had given white Republican nominees on average lessthan 5 percent of the vote in previous decades – white voters gave BernardEpton, Harold Washington’s white Republican opponent, 80 percent oftheir votes (Lewis, Taylor, and Kleppner 1997). In Cleveland, 70 percent

20 As this implies, collinearity between the independent variables is not a problem here.Although the number of cases is small, ordinary least-squares regression still representsthe best way to analyze the impact of each of these factors on the vote.

21 Neither spending by the black candidate nor the relative spending advantage of the whiteopponent over the black challenger was significantly related to white vote choice but insome specifications, spending by the white opponent was negatively related to whitesupport for the black challenger. Since campaign spending data are only available intwo-thirds of the cases, spending was not included in the final model.



of all white Democrats switched over to the white Republican candidaterather than support the black challenger (Cho 1974). The fact that 70

percent of all white voters in the twenty-six black challenger elections inthe data set opposed the black candidate and voted white, even thoughmost of the black challengers were Democrats running in overwhelm-ingly Democratic cities, strongly suggests that party was less importantthan race in these contests.22

Overall, the story that these aggregate electoral data tell is clear. Aspredicted by the information model, when blacks challenge to take overoffices they have never held, uncertainty and racial concerns end up dom-inating the white vote while other more conventional, nonracial factorsplay at best a secondary role. In almost every way – from the central roleplayed by the size of the black community to the wholesale abandonmentof the Democratic Party by white Democratic voters – the perceived threatof a black challenger leads to an exceptional kind of election.

Individual Voices

The regression results in Table 2.2 are important in that they help substan-tiate the role that race and racial fears played in the challenger contests.They do not, however, allow us to get into the minds of white residents. Ifwe focus on the vote and the actions of white residents, we can only inferwhat they are thinking when faced with the prospect of black electoralvictory. To know more about what whites are feeling and exactly what itis they fear, we need to listen to the voices of individual white residents.These voices echo my analysis of the aggregate white vote.

Although whites in the cities under consideration expressed an arrayof feelings about the prospect of black mayoral leadership, and althoughsome did end up supporting black challengers, newspaper coverage sug-gests that many white residents were intensely concerned about the pos-sibility of a black takeover. In Chicago, a white voter expressed his fears

22 Although cities do not report voter registration data by race and party, one can veryroughly calculate the proportion of whites who are Democrats by assuming that nearlyall African Americans in a city are Democrats and that Latinos and Asian Americans (whoare generally a very small proportion of the population during these elections) are evenlydivided between Democrats and Republicans. When an estimate of the proportion ofwhites in each city who are Democrats is added to the regression in Table 2.2, it is signifi-cantly related to white support for the black challenger, suggesting that white Democratsare more likely to vote for black challengers. Thus, although there is little doubt thatwhite Democrats abandoned their party at high rates in these elections, white Democratswere probably more likely than white Republicans to support black challengers.



about a black victory this way: “There will be turmoil in this city. What arethe blacks trying to do, win the whole United States from us? I’m scared”(Peterson 1983b). The fears of many whites are, in retrospect, quite fan-tastic. In Los Angeles, one resident viewed a black victory this way: “Ifwe have a colored mayor we’ll have colored people pushing us out of thecity. The whole city will be black if Bradley wins – all those people willbe moving up from the South” (Reich 1973a). An elderly parishioner wasquoted in the Chicago Tribune as saying “if that black man gets elected,no white woman would be safe on the streets” (Coleman 1983a). Onepossibility – neighborhood integration – was foremost in many whites’minds. Democratic Committee member Aloysius Majerczyk explainedthat his constituents were “afraid of scattered-site housing” and “con-cerned about the stability of [the city’s] neighborhoods” (quoted in Rivlin1992: 185–6).

The importance of these racial concerns also came through in analysesof exit poll data. In the few cities where whites were polled about boththeir racial concerns and their preferences in the mayoral election, whiteindividuals’ support for the black challenger was closely tied to whetheror not they indicated that they had strong racial concerns (Kaufman 1998;2004; Kinder and Sanders 1981; Pettigrew 1972; Jeffries and Ransford1972; Sears and Kinder 1971). Moreover, these same studies found thatdemographic factors, such as political ideology, partisan identification, orsocioeconomic status – normally powerful predictors of individual vot-ing preferences – played unusually limited roles (Kaufman 1998; Halley,Acock, and Greene 1976).

Black candidates themselves were all too well aware of the enormousuncertainty surrounding their candidacies. In addition to running largelyderacialized campaigns – almost half ran totally race-neutral campaigns,and only two explicitly talked about favoring the black community – manyopenly discussed white fears after the campaigns. Richard Arrington, theblack mayor of Birmingham, was clear on this point: “The transitioncreates uneasiness. I understand that” (quoted in Curry 1979). DavidDinkins’s slogan in New York in 1989, “Vote your hopes, not your fears,”stressed the same point.23

23 Media accounts echoed the sentiments of black candidates. In New York, for example,pollster Geoffrey Garin noted, “There is still a nervousness about any black candidate”(quoted in Borger 1989). Even in some of the less racialized contests, like the one that tookplace in St. Louis in 1993, reporters talked about white fears: “People are apprehensiveand uncomfortable about what might happen in this city. There are people who thinkthe city hall will collapse the next day” (Casmier et al. 1993).



table 2.3 The Transformation of the White Vote Between BlackChallenger and Black Incumbent Elections


CONVENTIONAL POLITICSCandidate QualityQuality of White Opponent −0.13 (0.07)∗

Quality∗ Black Incumbent Election −0.23 (0.11)∗∗

EndorsementsDemocratic Party Endorsement 0.02 (0.05)Party Endorsement∗ Black Incumbent Election 0.18 (0.08)∗∗

Local Newspaper Endorsement 0.02 (0.04)Newspaper Endorsement∗ Black Inc. Election 0.23 (0.12)∗

RACIAL FEARPercent Black of City Population −0.07 (0.00)∗∗∗

Percent Black∗ Black Incumbent Election 0.00 (0.00)Racialization of Black Candidate’s Campaign −0.13 (0.06)∗∗

Racialization∗ Black Incumbent Election 0.01 (0.09)Black Incumbent Election −0.30 (0.17)∗

Constant 0.64 (0.11)∗∗∗

Adj. R-squared 0.72

N 48


∗∗p < 0.05

∗p < 0.10

In short, by three different measures – the aggregate white vote chiefamong them, but also the individual sentiments expressed by white resi-dents, and the concerns voiced by black candidates themselves – there isevidence that racial fears played a critical role in these black challengerelections.

A Different Calculation in Black Incumbent Elections

But what happens the second time around? Is there, as the informationmodel predicts, a real transformation in the nature of the white vote inblack incumbent elections? A comparison of the aggregate vote in chal-lenger and incumbent elections suggests that there is. Table 2.3 combinesthe results of the same set of black challenger and black incumbent elec-tions and includes a series of interactions to directly determine if different



factors matter more or less in the latter.24 In the table, each variable that isnot interacted with black incumbent elections measures the effect of thatvariable in black challenger elections. Each interaction directly assesseshow much more or less that variable matters in black incumbent elections.Thus, reading down the table the significant interactions and the largelyinsignificant individual variables indicate that it is only after black incum-bents have been given a chance to prove themselves that conventional fac-tors begin to play an important role. As experience with black leadershipgrows and fear about its consequences declines, “politics” begins to playa primary role in voters’ choices.

More specifically, Table 2.3 reveals that conventional factors such ascandidate quality and political endorsements matter much more in blackincumbent elections than they do in challenger elections.25 As evidencedby the significant interaction between candidate quality and incumbentelections, the weight that white voters put on the quality of the whiteopponent grew sharply from the challenger to the incumbent elections.White voters may not have cared who the white candidate was when heor she faced a black challenger; at that point, any white would do. Butin black incumbent elections, white voters gave white candidates withexperience in citywide office almost 20 percent more votes than candi-dates with no experience in political office. As one white politician putit, “Race is not as much of a litmus test as it once was. The issue nowis who is the best qualified man” (Sun Reporter 1993). The reduction inwhite fears also appears to have increased white voters’ attention to news-paper endorsements. These endorsements were essentially meaningless inblack challenger elections, but endorsement by the main local newspa-per increased white support in the average incumbent election by another20 percent. As well, party endorsements helped in the black incumbentelections, even though they did not in the challenger elections. The local

24 This type of ordinary least-squares regression clearly cannot tell us about the causal direc-tions of these relationships. Given that Jacobson (1980) and others have demonstratedthe endogeneity of campaign spending, challenger quality, and other resources in cam-paigns, it is possible that the causal arrows could be reversed. For the present purposes,however, all that matters is that conventional politics plays more of a primary role inblack incumbent elections than in challenger elections.

25 It is also worth noting that endorsements and candidate quality do not become moreimportant in black incumbent elections simply because there is more variation on eachmeasure in incumbent elections. As the appendix shows, variance actually declines formost of these measures in black incumbent elections.



Democratic Party’s endorsement delivered an additional 16 percent of thewhite vote on average when blacks ran as incumbents.

A second important conclusion to draw from Table 2.3 is that racestill mattered in these elections. The fact that interactions with both ofthe racial fear variables are insignificant indicates that the size of theblack population and the racial focus of the black candidate’s campaignremained important to white voters. This is not surprising; even a briefreview of these elections reveals that many of them were highly racialized.Chicago, New York, and New Haven, in particular, represent cases wherethe general trend toward increased white support and diminished racialtension did not apply.

At the same time, there is evidence that race and racial fears were gen-erally less powerful in the incumbent elections. Further analysis indicatesthat racial fear lost half of its explanatory power: whereas the size of theblack population and the racial focus of the black candidate’s campaignalone account for 67 percent of the variation in the vote in black chal-lenger elections, these two variables account for only 36 percent of thevariation when white residents voted in black incumbent elections. Asone reporter put it in Chicago, “Something has changed. The paranoiaand ugly racism that ripped the city apart [four years ago] are largelyabsent this time” (Bosc 1987). Another observer of several black incum-bent elections in 1993 simply stated, “Race has faded in many places”(Sun Reporter 1993). This conclusion was echoed in a recent study ofmayoral voting in Houston (Stein, Ulbig, and Post 2005). Using threedifferent surveys of voters in the city, the study found that racial con-siderations faded over the course of Lee Brown’s tenure in that city. Asthe authors note: “Racial voting appears to be more influential in minor-ity candidates’ first electoral bids. In successive elections, voters come torely more on their evaluations of the minority incumbent’s job perfor-mance than their racial-group affiliation” (Stein, Ulbig, and Post 2005:177). Though the magnitude of the change should not be overstated, itseems that white residents became less likely to base their votes on therace of the candidate and their fear of a black takeover in the incum-bent elections. Instead when black incumbents ran for reelection, whiteresidents seemed to more deliberately assess the pluses and minuses oftheir candidacies. As Sharon Watson put it in her account of mayoralbids in eight cities, “In [reelection] campaigns, while race remains a spe-cial factor, it did not seem to overshadow the campaign, as was trueof the first elections. Race as an issue appeared neutralized somewhat”(1984: 172).



The Black Incumbent’s Record and the White Vote

The analysis to this point has ignored an important aspect of black incum-bent elections. If the information model is accurate and white voterschange their minds about black leadership largely because experience withblack incumbents disproves many of their fears, then a black incumbent’srecord in office should be an important variable shaping the white vote.26

The model predicts that black incumbents whose policies take resourcesfrom the white community to serve the black community or who presideover cities with faltering economies should do less well than black incum-bents who resist pro-black policies and govern under robust local eco-nomic conditions. To analyze the influence of black incumbents’ recordson the white vote, I assess a range of factors related both to overall con-ditions in each city and to the policies that each black incumbent enacted.Given that the main fears expressed by white residents before the electionof a black mayor were a deteriorating economy, falling housing prices,and widespread crime, I included measures of each of these three factorsin the model.27 Since residents might logically also gauge black leadershipby local government policy, I assess the impact of local government spend-ing patterns on the white vote by including a measure of how much a cityshifted resources from developmental spending toward redistributionalfunctions such as social services, housing, and education during the blackmayor’s first term. Spending is obviously one of the arenas where blackmayors can affect a large number of white residents, and any emphasison redistributive spending is likely to be perceived by white residents asa strong signal of a black mayor’s underlying preferences for serving theblack community.28

26 Obviously, this is not a relationship that is unique to black incumbents. Voters generallybase their decisions at least in part on the record of the incumbent (Niemi and Weisberg1993; Krosnick 1988; Downs 1957).

27 Specifically, I include change in per capita income relative to the average change in percapita income for all metropolitan areas (Bureau of Economic Affairs 2005), change inmedian housing prices (Bureau of the Census 1973–2001), and change in the violent crimerate per 1,000 residents (Federal Bureau of Investigation 1969–2001). Despite the factthat incumbents are often not responsible for local economic conditions, incumbents whoare lucky enough to serve during periods of relative economic gain tend to be rewarded,while those who lead during economic downturns are often punished (MacKuen, Erikson,and Stimson 1992; Lewis-Beck 1988).

28 The exact measure is the change in the proportion of city government spending thatgoes toward housing, education, and social welfare minus change in the proportion ofspending going to highways, streets, transportation, and airports (Bureau of the Census1964–2003). These categories represent a fairly standard division of spending in theurban literature (see e.g. Peterson 1981). Since residents may also be concerned about



table 2.4 Determinants of the White Vote in Black Incumbent Elections


RACIAL FEARPercent Black of City Population −0.27 (0.16)Racialization of Black Candidate’s Campaign −1.03 (0.36)∗∗

CONVENTIONAL POLITICSCandidate Quality −0.20 (0.08)∗∗

Quality of White OpponentEndorsementsDemocratic Party Endorsement 0.21 (0.08)∗∗

Local Newspaper Endorsement 0.21 (0.12)∗

BLACK INCUMBENT’S RECORDLocal ConditionsChange in Per Capita Income 0.40 (0.45)Change in Median Housing Prices 0.21 (0.09)∗∗

Change in Crime Rate −0.03 (0.08)PolicyChange in Redistributive Spending −0.11 (0.44)Constant 0.01 (0.20)Adj. R-squared 0.71

N 25


∗∗p < 0.05

∗p < 0.10

This analysis is displayed in Table 2.4, which presents the results of aregression explaining the aggregate white vote in black incumbent elec-tions in the same set of twenty-six cities. With a small number of casesand eleven independent variables, the model in Table 2.4 stretches thelimits of what regression analysis can do and should therefore be readwith some caution.29 Nevertheless, the results are suggestive.

The first conclusion is that there are signs of a link between the blackincumbent’s record and the white vote. The clearest evidence of this is thatchanges in the local housing market are significantly related to the white

the fiscal health of a city, in alternate tests I include a measure of the city’s debt as apercentage of the city’s overall revenue.

29 It is worth noting, however, that the basic results in Table 2.4 remain robust to a rangeof different specifications. In a series of alternate tests, I reran the analysis, dropping allnonsignificant variables or including only one measure for each factor (e.g. includingonly one variable for the incumbent’s record). The basic conclusions did not change.



vote. If, contrary to white fears, housing prices do not collapse and home-owners do well under black leadership, white residents will tend to rewardthe black incumbent. This finding parallels emerging research on so-calledperformance models of mayoral approval (Stein, Ulbig and Post 2005;Howell and Perry 2004; Howell and McClean 2001). These recent studieshave shown that in a small number of cities for which there are survey datawhite approval of incumbent black mayors is related to white evaluationsof local economic conditions and white perceptions of city services.30

However, as Table 2.4 also reveals, for other aspects of the incumbent’srecord, the existence of any relationship to the white vote is less clear.None of the other factors assessing the incumbent’s record significantlypredicts the white vote. The most that can be said is that in all three casesthe relationship between the incumbent’s record and the white vote is inthe expected direction.31

Thus, another interpretation is that the relationship between a blackincumbent’s record and the white vote is not nearly as strong as somemight have expected. In only the one case – housing prices – is the incum-bent’s record significantly related to the white vote, and even here themagnitude of the effect is not large. For every one point increase in medianhousing prices, there is only a one-fifth of a point gain in white supportfor the black incumbent.

Why doesn’t an incumbent’s record matter more? Part of the answermay be related to the limitations of the empirical model. Too many vari-ables and too few cases certainly cloud the analysis. The imprecise natureof the measures used in the analysis may also be a contributing factor.Whites, for example, may be more sensitive to housing prices and crimerates in their own neighborhoods than they are to overall changes at thecity level. But a third, and perhaps more critical, variable here is the factthat almost all black incumbents exceed expectations. In the majority of

30 Given that in these surveys local conditions and services are evaluated subjectively byeach individual respondent, there is a possibility of reverse causation – those who approveof the mayor tend to rate local conditions and services well. More work will have to bedone to assess this connection.

31 These regression results mirror bivariate analysis. Each of these three factors was indi-vidually correlated with the white vote in the expected direction, but in no case was thecorrelation statistically significant. The same can be said for the relationship betweenaffirmative action in local government hiring practices and the white vote. In alternatetests, I included a measure of the increase in the proportion of the public employees whoare African American during the mayor’s term in office. These tests indicate that there isa negative but not significant relationship between affirmative action and the white votein black incumbent elections.



the cities in the data set, per capita incomes grew compared to the nationalaverage, and in only two cases were gains in per capita income outpacedby more than 2 percent by gains made at the national level. Median hous-ing prices rarely fell. And although crime rates did rise in the averagecity, in most cases they did not rise at a rate appreciably faster than inother cities. Likewise, local government policy under black incumbentsdid little to substantiate white fears. The average city did not shift anyresources from developmental projects to such redistributive programs aswelfare, health, and housing, and in only two cases was more than 4 per-cent of the city budget transferred to redistributive functions. Finally, fewof the cities stood out in terms of affirmative action policies. All but oneincreased black hiring under the black mayor, but only one city increasedthe proportion of blacks in the public sector by more than 5 percent. Thelack of any dramatic change under black incumbents is not surprising,as these results mirror accounts from a range of existing studies. But itis important, because it represents a stark contrast with the expectationsand fears of many whites. In essence then, the lesson is the same in almostevery city. By maintaining tolerable or even relatively robust economicconditions and by choosing not to shift substantial resources away fromthe white community, black mayors, in almost all cases, demonstrate thatblack leadership does not appreciably hurt the white community. Thebottom line is that black incumbents can help themselves by introduc-ing policies that benefit the city but in the end all they have to do is notattack the white community. That is often enough to convince some whiteresidents that they are worth supporting.

Individual White Residents and Learning under Black Incumbents

Although the changes in the vote outlined in Tables 2.2, 2.3, and 2.4are important and certainly could be interpreted as showing that whiteresidents learn from their experiences under black incumbents, we need tolook at the sentiments expressed by individual white residents for directevidence of white learning. These views reinforce the basic conclusions Ihave drawn from my analysis of the aggregate vote. At least among thosewho were willing to speak out, there was a strong sense of relief and aclear change in perceptions of black leadership. The comments of oneMemphis resident are illustrative: “I get a feeling he is keeping the cityfrom being split asunder by racial divisions. I thought there would be alot of pressure on him from blacks to give in to all of their demands. Ithink he has been a mayor for all of the city” (A. Davis 1995). A voter



in Los Angeles put it this way: “A lot of people were very suspiciousand fearful before Bradley got in. But they never say anything now. I’msure they have changed their opinions. . . . Most important, he is a goodperson. Whether he is black or white is immaterial” (US News and WorldReport 1975). In Atlanta, the head of a local civic organization also noteda change in white sentiments in that city: “A lot of people who thoughtthey couldn’t live with a black administration have found they can do soquite well” (Eisinger 1980: 77). Many whites did not change their mindsabout black leadership at all, and in some cities the change was moredramatic than in others. But for the most part, the sentiments of whitevoters in black incumbent elections are a far cry from the expressions offear and uncertainty that surround black challenger elections.

Black candidates also made note of the learning process. ThirmanMilner’s comments are typical: “I ran up against racial issues in my firstelection with all the talk that crime would go up, the city would go downand I would only address black issues. But people began to see there are noracial distinctions when it comes to operating as a mayor” (Hagstrom andGuskind 1983). His views were echoed by Carl Stokes, Cleveland’s firstblack mayor: “There are so many prejudices that impact upon voters. Butonce they’ve seen an individual in action and what they’ve been able todo, they discard some of those biases and fears and look at that candidatethe same way they look at any other public official” (Vickers 1997: 23).

Another sign of learning that cannot be seen in the regressions inTables 2.2, 2.3, and 2.4 is a dramatic shift in tone between the typicalblack challenger election and the typical black incumbent election. Theblack challenger elections tended to be intense, racially polarized affairsthat were characterized by the media with phrases like “black versuswhite” (in the Flint election, 1983), “race-dominated” (in Chicago, 1983),and “highly polarized” (in Memphis, 1991). They often included highlyprovocative campaigns that played on white uncertainty and racial fears.But after a period of only a few years, these bitter, polarized electionsoften gave way to more ordinary affairs. In sharp contrast to black chal-lenger elections, electoral contests with black incumbents were generallydescribed with phrases that emphasized their lack of racial animosity:“low-key, almost dignified politicking” (in the Atlantic City election,1986), “a colorless campaign” (in Atlanta, 1977), “ho-hum voters” (inMemphis, 1995), “a lusterless campaign” (in Cleveland, 1969), and “ahumdrum affair” (in Denver, 1999). In Newark, for example, a black chal-lenger election that had included numerous incidents of racial heckling,bomb threats, and even violence was followed four years later by a black



incumbent election the New York Times characterized as “surprisinglyuneventful” (May 12, 1974). Similarly, in Birmingham, four years afterRichard Arrington’s election bid “brought racial animosities in the city totheir highest pitch since the civil rights demonstrations of 1963” (Raines1979), his reelection run ended “with a biracial coalition and the largestvictory margin in city history” (Russakof 1983). Incumbent elections insome cities, including Chicago, New York, and New Haven, did remainracialized and as such did not fit this pattern, but in the vast majority ofcases there was a marked change in the nature of the election campaign.

Do White Residents Simply Give Up?

One possible confounding factor in the analysis to this point is “whiteflight.” If a significant number of whites perceived black victory as cer-tain and effectively gave up, choosing not to vote or to leave their city ofresidence altogether, the changes that we see in the white vote might bemore apparent than real. To see if changes in the white vote are at least inpart a function of white flight or selective nonvoting by whites, in alter-nate analysis I added two measures to the regression model in Table 2.4:voter turnout in each election and change in the city’s white populationbetween the challenger and the incumbent election. The regression resultsindicate that the white vote was not related to declining turnout or towhite flight.32 Other available evidence supports this conclusion. First, incities where public opinion polls are available, the data show that whitevoters were not substantially more likely than non-voters to express sup-port for black incumbents.33 This strongly suggests that anti-black voters

32 The model assesses the relationship between overall turnout and white support for theblack candidate, but it seems likely that if turnout numbers for whites were available forall of these cities, white turnout would also prove to be unrelated to white support forthe black candidate. White turnout is correlated with overall turnout at 0.97 for citiesin which turnout by race is available. There is little evidence, moreover, of a relationshipbetween the vulnerability of the black incumbent and turnout. White residents are nomore apt to fail to vote in cities where blacks are the majority and could presumablydetermine the outcome of the election than they are elsewhere. White turnout actuallydrops less in majority black cities (5.5 point drop) than it does in minority black cities(8.7 point drop). Moreover, even if the first election was close and whites presumablyhad a real chance of reversing the outcome, white turnout dropped at about the samerate in these cities as it did elsewhere.

33 Similarly, in cities where data are available by precinct or district, turnout falls at aboutthe same rate across neighborhoods. White neighborhoods that were more opposed tothe black challenger generally lost voters at about the same rate as white neighborhoodsthat had been more supportive of the black challenger (Sonenshein 1993).



were not selectively dropping out. Second, not that many white residentsactually left their cities in the short period between the challenger andincumbent elections. The white proportion of the population declined by2 percent on average across the cities – not enough to account for thechanges in the white vote that are seen in Tables 2.2, 2.3, and 2.4 (Bureauof the Census 1994, 1990, 1978).34 And those whites who did leave thecities were probably not especially anti-black in their thinking. Existingresearch indicates that whites who leave cities tend to be younger, wealth-ier, and better educated (Deane 1990). The poor, older, and less educatedwho are left behind because the costs of moving are too high are thepeople who are most likely to be racially intolerant (Bobo 1983; Rieder1985). Thus, if anything, white out-migration should have led to a morerather than a less racialized white vote.35

Changes in the vote, changes in the tone of campaigns, and changesin the sentiments expressed by many white residents from challenger toincumbent elections all point to the conclusion that the information pro-vided by black representation erodes the fears of many white residentsand makes them more willing to consider supporting black leadership.

changes over time

If black leadership is to represent a real turning point in American racerelations, the effects that appear in the data set of twenty-six black mayorsmust extend to other candidates in other elections. Experience with oneblack incumbent, if it merely convinces white residents that a particularblack incumbent is trustworthy, will only have a temporary and isolatedeffect. If, however, learning is more extensive and experience under blackincumbents leads whites to fundamentally reevaluate the broader threatposed by black leadership and the degree to which black interests andwhite interests are in conflict, these elections could signal a new era inracial politics. Part of the answer to this question appears in Chapter 3 ina more detailed examination of white views under black representation,but a cursory look at the white vote for evidence of a gradual increase in

34 This fits with other analysis, which indicates that the rapid out-migration of whites waslargely stemmed by the time most of these cities had elected their first black mayors(Brown 1997).

35 It is also worth noting that while race is often a factor in motivating moves from neigh-borhood to neighborhood, studies of inter-metropolitan migration suggest that racialmotivations seldom explain moves into and out of larger cities (Koven and Shelley 1989;Long 1988; McHugh 1985; South and Deanne 1993; Stahura 1988).



table 2.5 Changes in Voting Behavior Over Time: BlackChallenger Elections

Average White SupportDecade (N) for Black Challenger (%) Average Turnout (%)

1960s (2) 17 76

1970s (5) 21 67

1980s (13) 33 54

1990s (6) 34 41

support for black candidates over time can also tell us a little about howwide-ranging the effects of black leadership are.

In Table 2.5, I begin to test this proposition by examining white supportfor black challengers by decade in the twenty-six elections.36 The analysisreported in the table suggests that white support for black candidates is infact on the rise. Support for black candidates who run as challengers hasincreased markedly over time. The number of cases in each decade may besmall, but the change is clear. Black challengers in the 1960s faced almostunanimous white opposition (83 percent of white votes). In the 1970s,white support for black challengers was, on average, 4 percent higher.In the 1980s, it grew by another 12 percent. By the 1990s, the averageblack challenger received the support of 34 percent of all white voters –certainly not an indication that race is now irrelevant, but nevertheless abig step from the fear and anti-black mobilization of the late 1960s.

Two other changes point to a similar transformation of the white voteover the same period. As the second column of Table 2.5 illustrates,turnout dramatically declined in black challenger elections over time.Overall, turnout dropped from an average of 76 percent in the 1960sto 41 percent in the 1990s. For the cities in which the data on turnoutcan be broken down by race, it appears that white turnout declined atroughly the same rate as overall turnout. It may well be that the electionof a black candidate to office does not create nearly as much uncertaintyand fear in the 1990s as it did in the 1960s.

An equally important change appears to have occurred in the tone andcontent of the white candidates’ campaigns. Early black challengers faced

36 A much stronger test of this proposition would assess white voter support for a randomset of black challengers over time. Unfortunately, no such data set is available. Generally,only major contests in large cities have exit polls or pre-election polls, and smaller citiesrarely have data on the racial and ethnic makeup of precincts, making it nearly impossibleto obtain the vote by race in most local contests.



white opponents who tried to play on white uncertainty about black lead-ership. Since whites had little past experience with black leadership andno idea what to expect, white candidates could campaign effectively byplaying on uncertainty. So, for example, in Los Angeles Sam Yorty couldrun against Tom Bradley in 1973 by asking: “You know what kind of citywe’ve got. We don’t know what we might get. So we’d be taking quitea chance with this particular kind of candidate.” Similarly, in Chicagomayoral candidate Eddie Vrdolyak played on white concerns about theconsequences of black leadership: “It’s a racial thing. Don’t kid yourself.I am calling on you to save your city, to save your precinct. We’re fightingto keep the city the way it is” (quoted in Rivlin, 1992: 155). In Newark,the white police chief announced dramatically in 1970: “Whether wesurvive or cease to exist depends on what you do on [election day]”(quoted in Eisinger 1980: 15). In Atlanta, when Maynard Jackson ran in1973, the slogan was, “Atlanta is too young to die.”37 But by the 1990s,whites had had the chance to evaluate the effects of black leadership ina range of major cities. Since Atlanta, Los Angeles, and other cities haddone relatively well under black leadership, white candidates could nolonger credibly claim that black leadership would mean the demise of thewhite community or that the city’s police force would quit en masse if anAfrican American were elected mayor. The old scare tactics faded out ofexistence.

There are other factors at work over this time period – increasinglystrong norms against overt racism, and declining racial tension as the riotsof the 1960s and 1970s faded into memory – so it is hard to know howmuch of these changes are actually due to white learning. But the end resultis that more and more black challengers are winning office in majoritywhite cities. In the 1960s, there were no black mayors of majority whitecities with more than 50,000 residents. In the 1970s, 11 black candidateswon election in these majority white cities. In the 1980s, the numberincreased to 15, while in the 1990s, 18 blacks won elections in majoritywhite cities. Eighteen may not seem to be a large number, but it actuallyrepresents a sizeable portion of all big-city black mayors – 57 percent

37 This phenomenon is not confined to black mayoral candidates, of course. When HarveyGantt ran for the Senate in 1990, Jessie Helms countered with an advertisement depictinga white worker losing a job to a less qualified black man. Analysts felt that the advertise-ment was the turning point of the campaign. “The ad scared some whites, convincingthem that Gantt was a threat to their future and . . . propelled Helms to victory” (Frisby1991: 14). Years earlier, George Wallace was much more direct: “If I don’t win, themniggers are going to control this state” (quoted in Black and Black 1973: 736).



in 2001. When blacks were being elected in that year, white voters werecritical to their success most of the time.

Changes in the white vote, in the kinds of campaigns white opponentsrun, and in the success rates of black candidates in minority black localesall hint at a sea change in the views and perceptions of a large segmentof the white community. Though it is impossible on the basis of the datapresented here to assign this change definitively to the effects of whitelearning from black leadership, they certainly leave open the possibilitythat experience with black leaders is fundamentally altering the nature ofbiracial politics in this country. To more directly assess changes in whiteattitudes and perceptions, in Chapter 3 I turn to a closer inspection ofwhite racial views before, during, and after the election of blacks to themayoralty.

But before we proceed, it is worth noting two qualifications. First,as Table A.1 in Appendix A makes clear, there is considerable variationacross the cities in the data set. Although change in most cities led togreater acceptance of black candidates and less racialized political con-tests, black mayors in Atlantic City, Baltimore, Chicago, Durham, Flint,New Haven, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, and San Franciscofaced more white opposition when they ran as incumbents than they didwhen they sought the mayoralty in the first place. Some of these cases canby explained by pointing to a poor local economy, a strong white chal-lenger, or to more idiosyncratic events, such as scandals, but others can-not. Chapter 4 will delve more deeply into differences across cities andcontexts and will try to link much of the variation in white reactions todifferences in the local information environment. Nevertheless, the lackof positive change in many cities should give us some pause.

Second, even in the cities that did experience positive change, thereis evidence that race continues to play a critical role even in blackincumbent elections. And despite the changes noted here, blacks are stillgreatly underrepresented at the mayoral level. The ICMA reports thatonly 2.1 percent of all mayors in the nation are African American – wellbelow the 12 percent of the national population that is African American(MacManus and Bullock 1993). Clearly, the nation has a long way to gobefore race no longer plays a role in mayoral politics. Expectations aboutthe dawn of an era of interracial collaboration should be tempered.


3

The Transformation of White Attitudes

The last chapter revealed important changes in the white vote. Experiencewith black incumbency increased white support for black candidates andaltered the nature of the white vote in biracial elections. These changesimply that whites are learning from their experience with black leadership,but the fact that some white voters begin to choose black candidates overwhite candidates does not tell us exactly what whites learn – how theirviews toward blacks change. The goal of this chapter is to focus directly onwhite views to try to understand what white voters learn during and afterthe transition from white to black leadership. The information that blackincumbency provides appears to have a broad impact on white views.The tests analyzed here suggest that experience with black incumbentsleads to positive changes in how many whites perceive black leadershipand the larger black community. The changes are not always dramatic,but they are real. The results also show that everyone does not learnthe same things from black leadership: among whites, Republicans andDemocrats, in particular, appear to learn differently, and the result is agrowing partisan divide on matters of race.

assessing white attitudes

To assess changes in white racial attitudes and policy preferences underblack mayors, I compared the attitudes of a representative sample of whiterespondents in cities with a white mayor to the attitudes of a similar sam-ple of white respondents in cities with a black mayor. The least compli-cated and most direct test of white learning would examine the attitudes ofa representative group of individuals in a city over time as they experienced

73



the transition from white to black leadership. Unfortunately, this type ofpanel data is unavailable. In lieu of it, I utilized responses from the Amer-ican National Election Study (ANES). The ANES contains an array ofquestions designed to gauge white racial attitudes and political orienta-tion and is therefore a valuable tool for my purposes. Although the dataare cross-sectional and thus do not follow the same individuals over time,I engage in a variety of tests to try to show that black leadership does, infact, cause a change in white attitudes. Combined, these tests hopefullypresent a clear picture of change.

By pooling samples from the years 1984 to 1992, I obtained an amplenumber of white responses from a wide variety of cities with black andwhite mayors.1 Details on the sampling, survey instruments, and othermethodology concerning the survey can be found in Miller, and NationalElection Studies (1994). Data on the race of mayors and council memberscome from the National Roster of Black Elected Officials. Other data oncity-level characteristics, such as racial demographics and median income,were drawn from the relevant census publications (Bureau of the Census1964–2003; 1994; 1990).

I looked for change in white views on two basic sets of measures: per-ceptions of black leadership and feelings about the black community.2 Ichose these two areas because each addresses a critical aspect of the infor-mation model. If white residents learn anything from their experienceswith black incumbents, it should be reflected first in their views of blackleadership. When black incumbents do not target the white communitybut instead serve the interests of many members of the white community,whites should recognize this and the perception that black leaders posea threat should be reduced. To see if perceptions of the threat posed byblack leadership changed under black incumbents, I examined responses

1 In this pooled sample, I included respondents from cities or primary areas with popula-tions greater than 25,000. Within the sample, there are 1,605 white respondents livingin eighteen cities with black mayors. These cities are 10 to 76 percent black. Across thewhole pooled sample, there are 6,543 respondents from seventy cities represented in thedata.

2 Another important step in the learning process is for white residents to recognize theeconomic effects of black leadership. The ANES has one question that taps into thiskind of learning: “How much real change do you think there has been in the posi-tion of black people in the past few years?” When I included it in supplementary tests,these tests appeared to show that the longer a city had experienced black leadership, themore likely white residents were to believe that the pace of racial change had slowed.Since answers to this question could be interpreted less as an objective measure of racialchange and more as a liberal indictment of American society, the conclusions to be drawnabout white learning from this result are not clear.


The Transformation of White Attitudes 75

to the following question: “Some say that the civil rights people have beentrying to push too fast. Others feel they haven’t pushed fast enough. Howabout you: Do you think that civil rights leaders are trying to push toofast, are going too slowly, or are moving about the right speed?”3 Thisparticular question in some ways represents a difficult first test. Since thequestion does not refer to local leaders and local politics, whites wouldhave to generalize from their experiences with local black leadership toall black leadership in order for there to be a change on this measure.4

The advantage of this particular question, however, is that it also tapsinto broader aspects of race relations. Bobo (1983) has argued that thisquestion is a key indicator of the state of racial conflict, and tests indi-cate that responses to the question are significantly correlated with recentor imminent changes in local racial policy making (Bobo 1983). Thus,the measure provides a reasonable assessment of race relations, and anyimprovement in white views on it should be considered significant.

A second important question about white learning is whether whiteviews about the black community as a whole change under black lead-ership. Whites may learn that black leadership is less threatening but,nevertheless, they may not change their views about the larger black com-munity. If white residents do not believe that local black leaders representthe interests of the black community, then they may feel that the blackcommunity still represents a significant threat. To assess this larger changein white attitudes, I examined white responses to all other ANES ques-tions in the pooled sample that tapped views about the black communitywithout getting into specific policy debates. Of these questions, the mostgeneral measure of white views toward blacks was a black feeling ther-mometer. For the feeling thermometer, white respondents were asked how“warmly” or “favorably” they felt toward blacks as a group on a scalefrom 0 to 100. I reversed the scale to get a measure of anti-black affect.Since different respondents can assign very different meaning to the same

3 Answers to the question were coded as follows: (1) too fast, (0.5) about the right speed,(0) too slowly.

4 The task is made even tougher by the fact that this question, and the others, are embeddedin the ANES, a survey that focuses on national politics. However, given the extensive mediacoverage of black mayors and the intense fears that many white respondents seem to haveabout black leadership at the local level, there is reason to believe that white views evenon more national or general questions will be affected by their experiences with a blackmayor. If this assumption is incorrect, and white responses to these questions do not reflectthe knowledge that white residents have obtained from living under black mayors, thenwe should expect to find no relationship between experience under a black mayor andwhite attitudes.



value on the scale (that is, what does a value of 60 mean?), I controlledfor each respondent’s feelings toward whites on a similar reversed feel-ing thermometer.5 The result is a measure of how negatively respondentsfelt toward blacks as a group relative to their feelings toward whites – ameasure that is akin to in-group favoritism (Tajfel 1981).6

A second measure of whites’ overall views of the black communitycomes from the four remaining race questions in the pooled sample: (1)“It’s really a matter of some people not trying hard enough; if blackswould only try harder they could be just as well off as whites.” (2) “Irish,Italian, Jewish and many other minorities overcame prejudice and workedtheir way up. Blacks should do the same without special favors.” (3)“Over the past few years, blacks have gotten less than they deserve.” (4)“Generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions thatmake it difficult for blacks to work their way out of the lower class.” Ineach case, respondents were asked whether they agreed or disagreed withthe statement and how strongly.7

On the surface, each of these four questions addresses a different issue.Yet each focuses on one central element of race relations: the extent towhich blacks face barriers in American society. The four questions arenot only linked conceptually, they are also linked empirically. Answersto the four questions are highly correlated, with inter-item correlationsranging from a low of 0.39 to a high of 0.59. Thus, I was able to createwhat I call a racial resentment scale using these four questions.8 If blackrepresentation does change white views about blacks as a group, then itshould be reflected in both the measure of anti-black affect and the racialresentment scale.9

5 Since some respondents tend to be high raters and others low raters, in alternate tests Istandardized responses by controlling for each respondent’s mean score across an arrayof six feeling thermometer measures. The following results are almost identical with orwithout feelings toward whites controlled, and with or without standardizing by the mean.The scale has a mean response of 0.55 (std. dev. = 0.10).

6 This scale can also be viewed as a measure of prejudice (Hurwitz and Peffley 1998; Allport1954). The more whites prefer whites as a group over blacks as a group, the more theycan be seen as prejudiced.

7 For each question, responses were (1) disagree strongly, (2) disagree somewhat, (3) neitheragree nor disagree, (4) agree somewhat, and (5) agree strongly.

8 This scale is almost identical to a racial resentment scale developed by Kinder and Sanders(1996).

9 To create the scale, responses to each question were ordered from least to most sympatheticto blacks. Individual responses were then added together, and the scale was normalized toa 0–1 range. The reliability of the scale is high, with a cronbach’s alpha of 0.77. The scale



To try to ensure that any differences in white attitudes between black-run and white-run cities are really a function of black leadership, I con-trolled for demographic and socioeconomic factors known or suspectedto affect white racial attitudes. The model includes the following controlvariables: (1) personal socioeconomic characteristics – age, education,income, gender, employment status, home ownership, and the number ofyears the respondent had lived in the city; and (2) contextual variables –portion of the city that is black, level of urbanism, year of the interview,and residence in the South.10 All independent variables were coded 0 to1 for ease of interpretation.11 Coding and descriptive statistics for thesevariables are included in Appendix B.

is centered on a value of 0.60, indicating that most white respondents are slightly moreresentful than they are sympathetic on these questions. Scores are distributed normally.Standard deviation is 0.24. I tried two alternate tests to ensure the robustness ofmy results. First, I repeated the following analysis with each individual question, ratherthan the whole scale. Although statistical significance usually declines, there are fewsubstantive changes to the results. Second, I used maximum likelihood estimationconfirmatory factor analysis to develop a latent factor representing the main theme ofthese four questions. When I substituted the latent factor into the following analysis, theresults were almost identical.

10 I also include in each model a dummy variable for cities that are within twelve months ofthe transition to the first black mayor of a city. I do so for two reasons. First, there is likelyto be heightened racial tension during the transition year. As a result, white respondentsmay be less rather than more racially tolerant in the period surrounding the election ofa city’s first black mayor. Second, white residents in cities that have just been taken overby black mayors have had little experience with black leadership and hence little time tolearn what the consequences of black leadership are.

11 One possible confounding factor is white flight. The rapid outmigration of a large num-ber of anti-black white residents under black mayors could clearly affect the remainingmix of white racial attitudes under black incumbents. As noted in Chapter 2, there areseveral factors that suggest this is not a primary factor here. First, the rapid outmigrationof whites was largely stemmed by the time these surveys were taken (Frey 1980). Between1980 and 1990 in the cities included in this survey, the proportion of each city’s popu-lation that was black increased 2 percent. Moreover, the proportion of the populationthat was black increased only marginally faster in cities that had black mayors duringthis period (2.3 percent increase). Second, in the analysis below, I control for the num-ber of years a respondent has been living in a community. If changes in white attitudeswere due to racially conservative whites moving out, one would expect that longer stayswould be associated with more liberal racial attitudes. This is decidedly not the case.If anything, whites who live longer in their communities are less racially tolerant andmore resentful. This seems to confirm research on migration patterns, which indicatesthat because moving is expensive, whites who leave cities tend to be younger, wealth-ier, and better educated (Deane 1990). The poor, older, and less educated who are leftbehind are the people who are most likely to be racially intolerant (Bobo 1983; Rieder1985).



Finally, to help assuage fears that the changes we will see in white atti-tudes under black mayors are not the result of especially racially tolerantwhite communities electing black mayors, I compared the racial attitudesof white residents in cities prior to the election of a black mayor withthe attitudes of whites in cities that did not elect black mayors. Acrossthe attitudinal measures looked at in this study, there were no consistentor substantial differences between the two groups of white residents. Inother words, whites in cities that elected black mayors were not especiallyracially tolerant before the arrival of a black mayor.12 It is only after yearsof experience under a black incumbent that differences emerge. Giventhat the main factors driving the election of black mayors are the size andresources of the black community (Karnig and Welch 1980), it probablyshould not be surprising to find that white racial views in cities electingblack mayors are not unlike white racial views elsewhere.

improved attitudes under black mayors

Whites do appear to learn from their experiences under black represen-tation. As illustrated by Table 3.1, whites who live in cities governed byblack mayors have significantly more positive racial attitudes than whiteswho live under white mayors. First, under black mayors, as one mightexpect, there were clear changes in how whites perceived black leader-ship. White residents who experienced black mayoral leadership wereless apt to believe that black leaders were pushing too hard. Given thatthis particular question can also be viewed as a measure of perceivedracial group conflict, there is at least some evidence here that the elec-tion of blacks to office diminishes racial tension, though the change is notdramatic.13

Importantly, it is not just whites’ views of black leadership thatchanged under black mayors. Feelings toward the black community as

12 It should, however, be noted that whites in cities that were just about to elect black mayorswere slightly more liberal or Democratic leaning than whites in other cities (analysis notshown).

13 Part of the reason why differences between the two types of cities are not very pro-nounced may be that whites who live in cities with white mayors are observing blackmayoral leadership from afar and are themselves learning from those observations.Although it is unlikely that this distance learning will have the same effect as actuallyliving under a black mayor – witnessing first hand that one’s own community did wellunder black leadership is probably very different from reading about economic trends inanother city in the newspaper – it is quite possible that learning is occurring in a range ofcircumstances.



table 3.1 The Impact of Black Representation on White Racial Attitudes

Views of BlackLeadership Views of the Black Community

Blacks PushingToo Hard2 Anti-black Affect1

RacialResentment1

Black Mayor (1 = yes0 = no)

−0.21 (0.12)∗ −0.02 (0.01)∗∗∗ −0.04 (0.01)∗∗∗

Education −1.5 (0.16)∗∗∗ −0.05 (0.01)∗∗∗ −0.21 (0.02)∗∗∗

Income 0.04 (0.17) −0.00 (0.01) −0.01 (0.02)Age 1.2 (0.21) 0.04 (0.01)∗∗∗ −0.01 (0.02)Gender (1 = male) 0.23 (0.08)∗∗∗

0.00 (0.01) 0.02 (0.01)∗∗∗

Ideology (1 = liberal) −2.1 (0.21)∗∗∗ −0.06 (0.01)∗∗∗ −0.27 (0.02)∗∗∗

Party ID (1 = Democrat) −0.55 (0.14)∗∗∗0.01 (0.01) −0.02 (0.01)

Employment Status(1 = unemployed)

−0.62 (0.23)∗∗∗ −0.00 (0.01) 0.01 (0.02)

Years Living in City 0.11 (0.13) 0.01 (0.01) 0.03 (0.01)∗∗

Percent Black in City 0.66 (0.28)∗∗0.04 (0.01)∗∗∗

0.13 (0.03)∗∗∗

Level of Urbanism 0.05 (0.16) 0.01 (0.01) −0.07 (0.02)∗∗∗

South (1 = yes) 0.30 (0.10)∗∗∗0.01 (0.00)∗∗∗

0.03 (0.01)∗∗

1986 −0.24 (0.15)1988 −0.30 (0.14)∗∗

0.02 (0.01)∗∗∗0.04 (0.01)∗∗∗

1990 −0.24 (0.16) −0.04 (0.01)∗∗∗

1992 −0.38 (0.13)∗∗∗ −0.02 (0.01)∗∗∗0.01 (0.01)

First Year of BlackMayoralty (1 = yes)

−0.13 (0.19) 0.01 (0.01) 0.01 (0.02)

Constant 0.59 (0.01)∗∗∗0.88 (0.02)∗∗∗

Intercept 1 −4.1 (0.25)∗∗∗

Intercept 2 −0.64 (0.23)∗∗∗

Adj. R-squared/pseudoR-squared

0.15 0.09 0.21

Chi Square 424

N 2597 2914 2461

Note: Figures are unstandardized coefficients with their standard errors.∗∗∗p < 0.01

∗∗p < 0.05

∗p < 0.10

1Ordinary Least Squares.2Ordered Logit.

a whole also appear to have shifted. Whites who lived under black may-ors were significantly more likely to feel warmly toward the black com-munity. For many whites, experience with black leadership also seemsto have led to a diminution of racial resentment. White residents incities with black mayors were substantially more sympathetic to black



interests and more understanding of the barriers facing the black com-munity.14

A Causal Connection?

Thus far, my analysis of Table 3.1 has overlooked an important issue.Given the cross-sectional nature of the data, it is possible that the causalarrow is reversed: cities with more tolerant white residents could be morelikely to elect a black mayor rather than the opposite. Although the avail-able evidence seems to suggest that the presence of a black mayor in acity depends much more on the size and resources of the black com-munity than on the characteristics of the white community (Karnig andWelch 1980), I nevertheless conducted several different tests on this point.In each case, the results were the same: each model suggests that blackmayoral leadership does lead to less negative views of blacks and blackleadership.

The first test is a two-stage least-squares model that uses instrumentalvariables to try to address the question of causality. It is described in detailin Appendix B, and the results of the model are displayed in Tables B.1and B.2 in the appendix. This alternate test strongly suggests that whiteviews on race are significantly more positive under a black mayor thanthey are under a white mayor even after the possibility of reverse causalityis taken into consideration. As an additional check on the link between ablack mayoralty and white racial attitudes, I reanalyzed the data with adifferent sample of respondents. In this second alternate model, I includedonly white respondents from cities that have had a black mayor at somepoint in their history. Since all of the cities in this new sample elected blackmayors at some point, any positive change in white attitudes under blackleadership is less likely to be the especially racial tolerant cities electingblack mayors and is more likely to be directly related to experience withan incumbent black mayor. The results, which are displayed in Table B.3

14 One might object that the model in Table 3.1 does not take into account all of thepotentially relevant factors in the local environment. Perhaps white attitudes depend onthe class makeup of the black population or the city-level mix of partisanship. However,alternate test revealed no such links. Although both the class makeup of the black com-munity and the percentage of Republicans in the city were related to the presence of ablack mayor (see Table 3B), their inclusion in these models did little to affect the overallresults. I could find no city-level contextual factor that eliminated the link between ablack mayoralty and white attitudes.



in Appendix B, corroborate the findings in Table 3.1. In this more selectgroup of cities, the analysis reveals once again that under black mayorsanti-black affect declines, racial resentment wanes, and whites perceiveless racial group conflict.

When Do Whites’ Attitudes Change?

One last way to try to ensure that the changes we see under black mayorsare real is to look at changes over the course of black mayoral leader-ship in a city. If changes in white racial attitudes really are a functionof information garnered from the actions of black incumbents, then weshould see whites beginning to feel less and less threatened and express-ing increasingly positive racial attitudes as the years go by under a blackmayor. In Table 3.2, I test this proposition. Here we are only includingwhite respondents from cities that currently have a black mayor. Thedependent variables are the same: I consider attitudes toward black lead-ership and views of the black community (anti-black affect and the racialresentment scale). The independent variable in this case is the length oftime a city has had a black mayor. In order to ensure that the results arenot skewed by racially tolerant respondents from one or two cities thathave had decades of black mayoral leadership, I normalized the years ofblack leadership in each city.15 This allowed me to compare the viewsof respondents reporting at the beginning of a black mayor’s tenure withrespondents reporting later in the tenure of a black leader.16 It is worthnoting that across the entire white American population there has beenno overall improvement on these particular racial attitudes, and on somequestions whites in America actually feel more negatively toward blacksthan they did decades ago (Schuman et al. 1997). Thus, positive changesunder black mayors are not the result of a general improvement in racialattitudes over time.

15 Thus, length of time under black leadership is measured on a scale from 0 to 1, with 0

being the first year a black mayor was elected and 1 being the last year the city had ablack mayor. To create the scale, I simply add up the number of years the city has had ablack mayor in office (excluding any interim years in which a white mayor held office).I then calculate the number of years the city has had a black mayor at the time of thesurvey for each respondent and divide the latter number by the former.

16 As a secondary test, I repeated the analysis with a nonnormalized scale (the number ofyears under black leadership). The results were almost identical, but the level of sig-nificance of the effects of black leadership on white racial attitudes declined in somecases.



table 3.2 How Time Under Black Leadership Affects White Racial Views


Blacks PushingToo Hard2

Anti-blackAffect1

RacialResentment1

Years Under a BlackMayoralty (1 = last year,0 = first year)

0.75 (0.52) −0.05 (0.02)∗∗∗ −0.15 (0.04)∗∗∗

Education −1.8 (0.33)∗∗∗ −0.05 (0.01)∗∗∗ −0.22 (0.03)∗∗∗

Income −0.05 (0.39) 0.00 (0.01) −0.00 (0.03)Age 1.4 (0.48)∗∗∗

0.04 (0.02)∗∗ −0.00 (0.04)Gender (1 = male) 0.16 (0.17) 0.00 (0.01) 0.02 (0.02)Ideology (1 = liberal) −2.5 (0.47)∗∗∗ −0.06 (0.02)∗∗∗ −0.28 (0.04)∗∗∗

Party ID (1 = Democrat) −0.61 (0.30)∗∗0.01 (0.01) −0.02 (0.03)


0.05 (0.59) −0.00 (0.02) 0.02 (0.04)

Years Living in City −0.03 (0.31) 0.01 (0.01) 0.03 (0.02)Percent Black in City 0.77 (0.52) 0.02 (0.02) 0.08 (0.04)∗∗

Level of Urbanism 0.38 (0.40) −0.01 (0.01) −0.07 (0.03)∗∗

South (1 = yes) 0.39 (0.22)∗ 0.01 (0.01) 0.03 (0.02)1986 −0.34 (0.39)1988 −0.73 (0.38)∗ −0.02 (0.01)∗∗

0.05 (0.02)∗∗

1990 −0.94 (0.44)∗∗ −0.02 (0.02)1992 −1.6 (0.47)∗∗∗ −0.01 (0.01) 0.08 (0.03)∗∗∗

Constant 0.62 (0.02)∗∗∗0.96 (0.04)∗∗∗

Intercept 1 −4.3 (0.65)∗∗∗

Intercept 2 −0.61 (0.61)Adj. R-squared/pseudo

R-squared0.20 0.08 0.21

Chi Square 138

N 622 800 800


∗∗p < 0.05

∗p < 0.10


The results here are not totally uniform, but there does appear tobe a clear link between the length of time a white respondent has livedunder black leadership and at least some of his or her views. In particular,Table 3.2 reveals a significant positive relationship between time undera black mayor and white views of the black community. As time passes



and white residents’ experiences with black leadership grow, whites feelless resentful and more warmly toward the black community. Alternatetests also show that the longer a city has experienced black leadership, themore likely whites are to believe that the pace of racial change is slowing.In other words, as time goes by, white residents are more apt to recog-nize that black leadership does not mean racial upheaval. At the sametime, there is no clear link in Table 3.2 between time under black mayoralleadership and white perceptions of black leadership. As the years wentby, whites did not become more likely to say that black leaders were notpushing hard. Whether this is because this particular question did nottap into local politics effectively or because there is some other interven-ing variable is unclear. Without panel data definitive answers are hard tocome by.

One thing we can do is look at events in these cities over time to seeif they mirror the pattern of positive change that we see in this publicopinion analysis. Accounts from the bulk of the cities do suggest thattime and experience with black mayoral leadership are important vari-ables. Atlanta is a typical case: Maynard Jackson’s mayoral victory wasfollowed by a period of bitter racial confrontation. Only with the passageof time did the true impact of a black mayoralty become clear. Specifi-cally, it was only after Jackson played a pivotal role in breaking a strikeof low-paid, mostly black garbage workers that he began to receive moresupport from the white community. According to one advisor, Jackson’sactions helped make whites “less paranoid” (Scott 1977). Similarly, thebeginning of Mayor Coleman Young’s tenure in Detroit was marked byconsiderable racial strife (Rich 1987). Only after Young proved to whiteresidents that he could govern the city fairly did racial tensions decline.After Young prepared an austerity budget that cut city services and laidoff nearly 4000 workers, his electoral support grew, and by the time ofhis reelection, his two white primary opponents could muster only a com-bined 19 percent of the white vote (Scott 1977). This anecdotal evidenceconfirms that it takes time for white residents to assess the impact ofblack leadership, just as it takes time for a black incumbent’s actions toreduce white uncertainty enough to alter white attitudes toward the blackcommunity.

A review of Tables 3.1 and 3.2 reveals two other interesting findings.First, the results suggest that the size of the black population is negativelyrelated to white views of blacks and black leadership. The higher thepercentage of blacks in a city, the more racial conflict whites perceive andthe more racially resentful they are. This finding fits into a long line of



research that has shown that white attitudes are closely shaped by thesize of the local black population.17 In most of these studies, as the blackpopulation grows, race relations deteriorate.

This relationship does, however, raise an important question. Whyis there a negative relationship between a larger black presence andwhite attitudes on one hand and a positive relationship between the pres-ence of black leadership and white attitudes on the other? Why do theactions of blacks in positions of authority seem to quell white fears, whilethe presence of a large black population seems to increase racial tensions?I argue that the critical difference between the positive effects of blackleadership and the negative effects of a larger black population is thecontrol that black leaders have over their actions and the white commu-nity. What may make black political leaders different from black neigh-bors or co-workers and consequently why black representation shouldprovide more credible information that alters white views is the factthat when blacks assume political office, it marks one of the first timesthat blacks have authority to enact policies or make changes that couldharm the white community. This perceived authority or control not onlymakes black political leadership especially threatening, it also makes theactions of black leaders especially informative. If whites believe that amayor has considerable power to influence events (as surveys show theydo), then the fact that black leadership does not hurt white interests canbe seen as credible evidence that blacks are not out to get the white com-munity. In contrast, the behavior of blacks in most other situations canbe dismissed because whites can surmise that black behavior was con-strained.

If my interpretation is accurate, then these results help us to understandthe dynamics of interracial contact, suggesting that whites only change

17 In particular, a higher percentage of blacks in the local community has been linked toincreased white on black violence (Corzine, Creech, and Corzine 1983), an increasedsense of threat among whites (M. Taylor 1998, Fossett and Kiecolt 1989, Giles andEvans 1986), higher levels of white bloc voting (Murray and Vedlitz 1978), greater whitesupport of racist candidates (Giles and Buckner 1993, Black and Black 1973, more conser-vative racial policy preferences (Glaser 1994), greater support for segregation (Pettigrewand Campbell 1960), suppression of black voting (Matthews and Prothro 1963), anddecreased interracial friendship (Shaw 1973). Judging by these studies, white Americansseem to be keenly aware of and very threatened by the presence of minorities in theirneighborhoods and cities. However, it is important to note that other have found eitherno relationship between the size of the black community and whites attitudes (Bledsoeet al. 1995) or a positive relationship (Welch et al. 2001; Kinder and Mendelberg 1995;Carsey 1995).



their views of black leaders when they receive information that they per-ceive as credible. In particular, these findings corroborate recent researchin social psychology, which is increasingly finding that how group mem-bers receive information about out-groups is more critical than what infor-mation they receive (Scarberry, Ratcliff, and Lord 1997; Bar-Tal 1997).18

The second interesting finding to emerge from Tables 3.1 and 3.2 con-cerns the link between white racial views, political ideology, and partisan-ship. Both tables report a fairly strong relationship between identifyingas a Republican and holding conservative ideological views and holdingmore negative views of black leaders and the black community. This sug-gests that there may be important differences in attitudes toward blacksacross different segments of the white community. Given that all whitesdo not feel the same way about the black community, we should probablynot expect that all whites will respond the same way to black leadership.In particular, some whites may be less affected by the information blackincumbents provide.

Who Changes Their Mind?

Given the clearly divergent racial agendas of the Republican and Demo-cratic parties and the link between Republicanism and more negativeviews of the black community illustrated in Tables 3.1 and 3.2, one mightpredict that white Republicans will be more resistant to the informa-tion that black representation provides (Carmines and Stimson 1989;Huckfeldt and Kohfeld 1989; Kinder and Sanders 1996; Kinder and Sears1981). White Democrats, on the other hand, may be much more receptiveto having a positive view of blacks and black leadership, particularly sincesuch an attitude fits into their political views more broadly. If this weretrue, one should find that most if not all of the positive change in racialattitudes and voting behavior that occurs under black mayoral leadershipis confined to white Democrats.

In Table 3.3, I test this proposition by separating out the responses ofwhite Democrats, white Republicans, and white Independents to black

18 As I mentioned in the Introduction, the exceptional effects of black mayoral leadership onwhite attitudes echo a series of studies in experimental psychology that suggests that oneof the few times whites really change their attitudes about blacks is when they know thatblacks are free to choose their actions (Wilder, Simon, and Faith 1996). The link betweenmayoral authority and attitude change also fits with formal models in political sciencethat have shown that actions by individuals are uninformative unless the individual is incontrol and has the power to choose a different course of action (Lupia and McCubbins1998).



table 3.3 How Time Under Black Leadership Affects the Views ofDemocrats, Republicans, and Independents


Blacks PushingToo Hard2

Anti-blackAffect1

RacialResentment1

Years Black Mayor 0.57 (0.52) −0.08 (0.02)∗∗∗ −0.18 (0.04)∗∗∗

Years Black Mayor∗

Democrat View0.01 (0.37) −0.08 (0.02)∗∗∗ −0.07 (0.04)∗∗

Years Black Mayor∗

Republican View−0.42 (0.36) 0.12 (0.02)∗∗∗

0.14 (0.03)∗∗∗

Education −1.7 (0.31)∗∗∗ −0.06 (0.01)∗∗∗ −0.22 (0.03)∗∗∗

Income −0.04 (0.38) 0.01 (0.02) 0.01 (0.03)Age 1.5 (0.46)∗∗∗

0.04 (0.02)∗∗0.01 (0.04)

Gender (1 = male) 0.10 (0.17) 0.01 (0.01) 0.02 (0.02)Ideology (1 = liberal) −2.6 (0.46) −0.06 (0.02)∗∗∗ −0.28 (0.04)∗∗∗

Party (1 = Democrat) −0.95 (0.58)∗ 0.15 (0.02)∗∗∗0.14 (0.05)∗∗∗


0.20 (0.59) −0.00 (0.02) 0.01 (0.04)

Years Living in City 0.13 (0.29) 0.01 (0.01) 0.02 (0.02)Percent Black

in City0.01 (0.01) 0.03 (0.02) 0.09 (0.04)∗∗

Level of Urbanism 0.41 (0.39) 0.01 (0.01) −0.05 (0.03)∗

South (1 = yes) 0.38 (0.21) 0.01 (0.01) 0.03 (0.02)1986 −0.46 (0.38)1988 −0.80 (0.37)∗∗

0.02 (0.01)∗ 0.05 (0.02)∗∗

1990 −0.94 (0.42)∗∗ −0.02 (0.02)1992 −1.6 (0.4)∗∗∗

0.02 (0.01) 0.09 (0.02)∗∗∗

Constant 0.54 (0.02)∗∗∗0.88 (0.05)∗∗∗

Intercept 1 −4.7 (0.65)∗∗∗

Intercept 2 −0.95 (0.61)Adj. R-Squared 0.21 0.14 0.22

Chi Square 154

N 658 800 800


∗∗p < 0.05

∗p < 0.10




mayoral leadership.19 The dependent variables are the same racial atti-tude questions examined earlier. The only change to the model is thatin Table 3.3 I interact the years under a black mayor variable withdummy variables for Democratic and Republican Party identification.Independents become the baseline group. To gauge how white Indepen-dents respond to time under black leadership, one need only look at thecoefficient for “Years Black Mayor.” To determine how Democrats (orRepublicans) respond to time under black leadership, one has to addthe coefficient for the “Years Black Mayor – Democrat” (or Republican)interaction term and the coefficient for “Years Black Mayor” together.

Table 3.3 shows that, as expected, white Democrats, white Republi-cans, and white Independents respond differently to black representation.First, the more time the white Independents in the sample spent underblack mayoral leadership, the more positive their racial views became:as the years under a black mayor went by, white Independents felt lessanti-black affect and expressed less racial resentment. Changes were evenmore pronounced and positive for white Democrats: in two of the threecases, white Democrats’ views improved even more rapidly than thoseof white Independents. Republicans, however, responded less positivelyto time under a black mayor. On two of the three attitudinal measures,Republican views improved significantly less than those of Independents.Adding the Republican interaction term with the “Years Black Mayor”term it appears, in fact, that there was little to no change in the levelof racial resentment and anti-black affect among white Republicans. Thesame pattern emerges if one does not look at change over time under blackleadership but instead simply compares whites in cities with a black mayorto whites in cities with a white mayor, as was done in Table 3.1. WhiteDemocrats who lived in cities with a black mayor had significantly morepositive views of blacks than white Democrats who lived in cities with awhite mayor. By contrast, white Republicans’ racial views changed onlymarginally. This suggests that some white Republicans either ignore or dis-count the words and actions of black incumbents. Given this resistanceto the information that black leadership provides, it seems reasonable toargue that a racial prejudice or racial stereotype model of political behav-ior may more accurately describe the views of some Republicans than aninformation model. In short, the information model may not apply to allwhites equally.

19 Independents are self-identified Independents or respondents who listed no partyaffiliation.



The same pattern is also evident when one looks at the actual vote inmayoral elections involving black incumbents. As noted in Chapter 2, inthe few cases where voting data are broken down by both race and partyidentification, the evidence suggests that the bulk of the increase in whitesupport for black incumbents came from white Democrats (Sonenshein1993; Pettigrew 1976). White Republicans, in contrast, tended to voteagainst black candidates whether they were challengers or incumbents.This suggests that racial considerations are most consequential for whiteDemocrats (see Hurwitz and Peffley 1998 on this point). Whether whiteDemocrats support black leadership seems to be greatly affected by theirviews of blacks, while white Republicans may have a range of reasons foropposing black candidates that may or may not include racial considera-tions.20

The end result of these divergent patterns is that black representa-tion has a polarizing effect on the white community. Democrats becomemore and more racially liberal, while Republicans’ views stay largelythe same. In fact, the racial attitudes gap between white Democrats andwhite Republicans more than doubles in size under black mayoral lead-ership. Table 3.4 illustrates this growing gap by presenting the differencebetween mean Democratic views and mean Republican views across thesame series of racial questions. As column one of Table 3.4 reveals, thegap between white Democrats and white Republicans in cities with awhite mayor was rather small. On one of the three questions, the dif-ference is not even statistically significant (p < .05). But in cities with ablack mayor, the gap between white Democrats and white Republicanson each indicator doubled or more than doubled. On matters of race,

20 Although one could argue that this pattern is the result of the defection of racist whiteDemocrats from the party, there are two factors that make this highly unlikely. First,since most Democratic defectors become Independents rather than Republicans, onewould expect any negative change to be among Independents, not Republicans. Second,if this pattern is due to racial realignment, one would expect that the pattern would bemore pronounced in the South, where racial realignment was itself most pronounced.Additional tests, however, reveal no clear difference in the pattern between Southernand non-Southern cities. Third, by all accounts, racial realignment was a slow, gradualprocess. Thus, it is a stretch to argue that realignment can account for changes in theDemocratic and Republican votes that occur in the same city over a four-year period. Notenough Democrats defect in a four-year period to change the Democratic vote as muchas it changes in many cities. Finally, it seems unlikely that the gradual defection of whitesfrom the Democratic Party over time could account simultaneously for the differences inthe views of different white partisans who live under black mayors and for differentialchanges in the views of different white partisans as the years under black leadershipgo by.



table 3.4 Black Representation and the Polarizationof the White Community

Difference Between MeanDemocratic and Mean

Republican View

Cities Without aBlack Mayor

Cities With aBlack Mayor

Sense of Black Threata −0.06∗∗ −0.11

∗∗

Anti-black Affecta −0.01 −0.03∗∗

Racial Resentmenta −0.04∗∗ −0.11

∗∗

Note: Indicates that difference between Democratic and RepublicanMean is significant∗p < 0.10

∗∗p < 0.05

∗∗∗p < 0.01

aAll dependent variables coded 0–1.

black representation means even greater division between Democrats andRepublicans.

implications

The tests in this chapter indicate that experience with black mayors canlead to improved white views of black leadership and significant positivechanges in white attitudes toward the black community at large. Thesechanges are all consistent with an information model of white behavior.When blacks are perceived to have the power to hurt white interests andwhen by all accounts they do not do so, many whites may interpret thatexperience as a sign that blacks and black leadership are not as bad asthey may have feared and their attitudes appear to change accordingly.All of this fits well the information model. None of it is predicted by aracial prejudice or a social dominance view. We thus have a fairly cleartest and fairly compelling evidence in favor of the information model. Wealso have fairly strong evidence that many whites in American cities arefar from prejudiced. They are open to change and willing to look at theblack community in a more positive light.

At the same time, the data also indicate that black representation hassignificant limitations. Not everyone seems to “learn” from black leader-ship. The change that occurs within the white community, when consid-ered in the aggregate, is apparently largely to be confined to Democrats



and Independents. It seems as if part of America remains prejudiced andis unwilling or unable to change. Moreover, the limited nature of changeto date is evident in accounts of policy divides from many of the citiesincluded in the data set. Despite years and often decades of black mayoralleadership, whites and blacks continue to differ over minority contractset-asides, police behavior, public schools, and downtown versus neigh-borhood development, among other things (Rivlin 1992; Stone 1997). Atleast over the short term, black representation has only a limited impact onthe “extraordinary racial divide” that separates white and black America(Kinder and Sanders 1996: 28).


4

Learning Across Different Cities

To say that black representation generally leads to significant positivechange in white racial attitudes and white voting behavior is not to saythat white Americans in all contexts are equally likely to be affected byblack leadership. Indeed, if the information model is accurate, then whitereactions should vary sharply depending on the local information envi-ronment. In this chapter, I begin to consider how context affects boththe information that whites receive from black leadership and the natureof their response to that leadership. White reactions to black leadershipdepend greatly on the amount of control black leadership is perceived toexercise over local policies and conditions. The higher the level of per-ceived control, the more information whites obtain from black leadershipand the more positively they respond to black incumbents.

A brief account of events in two different cities, Memphis and NewYork, highlights the enormous variation in white reactions to black lead-ership and raises important questions about why white residents respondso differently in different contexts. Memphis and New York are partic-ularly interesting because the two cities followed similar patterns beforethe election of a black mayor and only diverged after that mayor enteredoffice. In both cities, black mayoral leadership came only recently andonly after overcoming significant white opposition.

In Memphis, the first black mayor was elected in 1991. The late arrivalof a black mayoralty in Memphis was not the result of a lack of efforton the part of the black community. In every election between 1971 and1991, black candidates vied for the mayoralty, with widespread supportfrom black leaders and black voters. But every time a black candidate ranfor election, the white community in Memphis responded with almost

91



unanimous support for the white candidate. The most successful of theblack challengers, Otis Higgs, managed to win a paltry 10 percent of thewhite vote in 1975. In each election, whites won by trumping AfricanAmerican turnout (Wright 2000). Given this history, it is no surprise thatthe white vote was once again squarely behind the white candidate onOctober 4, 1991, when another black challenger, Willie Herenton, soughtthe mayoralty. Despite the fact that Herenton’s campaign tried to avoidracial issues, and despite the fact that there were few major policy differ-ences between Herenton and his white opponent, white voters in Memphisonce again refused to support the black challenger. In what has beendescribed as “one of the most racially polarized mayoral elections in urbanAmerican history,” Herenton was opposed by 98 percent of white voters,who turned out in record numbers to try to defeat the black candidate(Pohlman and Kirby 1996: xv; Wright 1996). Fortunately for Herentonand his black supporters, the outcome of this election was different. AnAfrican American finally took over the mayoralty.

What makes the Memphis story so remarkable is what happenedafter Willie Herenton assumed power: decades of heated white opposi-tion faded away, and support for black leadership grew dramatically. ByHerenton’s fourth year in office, a citywide poll revealed that three-quarters of all whites in the city approved of the job that he had done anda slim majority thought he should be reelected (A. Davis 1995; Polhmanand Kirby 1996). Later that year, Herenton, running as an incumbent,received the support of nearly 40 percent of all white voters (Hobbs 1995).Four years later, in 1999, he won again with half of the white vote, prompt-ing the Commercial Appeal, the city’s main newspaper, to highlight the“unprecedented unity” surrounding the election (Goad 1999). In his thirdreelection bid, in 2003, Herenton faced no serious opposition – white orblack.

This turnaround in white political behavior in Memphis seems allthe more noteworthy when Memphis is contrasted with New York City.African Americans in New York City have also long had a difficult timegetting elected. Historically, black representation on the city council andother elected offices in the city has been well below parity (Logan andMollenkopf 2003; Mollenkopf 1986). As John Mollenkopf has noted,“New York City has not incorporated minorities and . . . has not pro-duced policies that are especially aimed toward minorities” (1986: 591).Thus, when David Dinkins ran to become the city’s first black mayor in1989, most observers were not surprised to find the city racially polarized


Learning Across Different Cities 93

in response. Despite Dinkins’s repeated attempts to appeal to the city’swhite voters by stressing nonthreatening themes, such as fiscal prudenceand law and order, he managed to garner only 28 percent of the whitevote (Kaufman 1998; Arian et al. 1991). Nevertheless, Dinkins becamethe city’s first black mayor.

In sharp contrast to events in Memphis, after Dinkins was elected blackleadership was met with anything but growing acceptance. In fact, racerelations in the city appeared to get worse rather than better with Dinkinsin office (Sleeper 1993). The next four years were marred by a series ofhigh profile racial incidents. And when Dinkins ran for reelection, racialpolarization actually increased. In the 1993 election, 78 percent of whitevoters opposed Dinkins – an increase that was just enough to give his whiteopponent, Rudy Giuliani, the victory (Kaufman 1998). Black leadershipin New York City was over almost before it began.1

These examples suggest that in some cases black leadership leads toracial conciliation, while in other cases it leads to continued, if not height-ened, racial antagonism. According to the information model, the patternswe see across cities should be a function of the quality of the informationthat black leadership provides the white community. When experiencewith a black mayor gives white residents clear, concrete information aboutthe effects of black leadership on the white community, changes in whitebehavior should be pronounced. In contrast, when whites’ informationabout black leadership is limited or uncertain, change in white behaviorshould be minimal. But why do white residents get more information insome cities than in other cities?

For whites, it is critical to know whether a black leader or some-one else is responsible for the ongoing well-being of the white commu-nity. The more that blacks are free to enact their own agendas and to

1 A factor that makes Dinkins’s failed reelection bid in New York particularly surprising isthe liberal nature of the white vote in that city. Why did an incumbent black Democratlose his reelection bid in a city that is generally so liberal? Part of the answer, I will argue,is racial threat and fears of blacks eventually taking control. Dinkins was the recognizedleader of a large black community and that scared many whites – even liberal whites.When Dinkins sided with the African American community and failed to act decisivelyagainst violent black incursions into the white community, it scared whites even more.Who knew where the city was going? The result was a small shift in the white vote thathelped thwart Dinkins’s reelection bid. This is, however, not the entire story. An economicrecession, a terrorist bombing of the World Trade Center, and increased voter turnout inmore conservative Staten Island due to a referendum on that island’s secession all cut intoDinkins’s liberal base.



overcome any constraints imposed by the white community, the morewhites will attribute their ongoing well-being to black leadership, and themore insight they will gain into the interests of blacks and black leaders.One implication of this logic, as I have explained, is that racial demograph-ics play a critical role in whites’ perceptions of black leaders. Specifically,changes in white behavior should vary predictably across three types ofcities: majority black cities, majority white cities, and racially balancedcities.

In cities where blacks are the majority of the population and the dom-inant political group, it is easy for whites to link local conditions to theinterests and policies of black leadership. In these cities, when the worldunder black leadership remains very similar to the world under white lead-ership, many whites interpret this as a sign that they have little to fear fromblack leaders. Blacks could have changed things and they chose not to.But in other types of cities, the information provided by black incumbencyis more limited. Where whites are the clear majority and dominate in thepolitical arena, the election of a black mayor does not represent a real tran-sition of power from the white community to the black community. Whitesstill do not know what would happen if the black community truly hadcontrol. As a result, the actions of a black mayor in a majority white cityprovide only limited information, and changes in white behavior are mod-erate. In racially balanced cities, the information provided by black lead-ership is even less clear. The election of a black mayor will not necessarilylead to black control of the local political process, but a black mayoralvictory will likely put blacks on the cusp of power.2 This has two impor-tant effects. First, it is likely to spur white elites into action. Rather thancede control of local political resources, whites will mobilize to preventblacks from taking control. The result in many cases is policy paralysis.Because no one is clearly in control and a black agenda is never realized,most white voters receive little new information from the black mayoralty.Second, the rough balance of power between the black and white com-munities raises considerable uncertainty about subsequent elections. Inany future election, with the right outcome, a black-led coalition reallycould gain control and take over the local political arena. With little newinformation and the possibility of black control becoming much closer,white opposition to black leadership is likely to increase in these cities.

2 In the racially balanced cities that are examined in this book, blacks held on averageone-third of the city council seats at the time the first black mayor was elected.



testing the effect of racial demographics

on the white vote

To test these predictions, I divided the twenty-six cities with black chal-lenger and black incumbent elections into three groups. Cities with pop-ulations that were more than 55 percent white were coded as majoritywhite, those with populations that were 45 to 55 percent white werecoded as racially balanced, and those whose populations were less than45 percent white were coded as minority white.3 I chose these cutoffsbecause they adhere to previous empirical research.4 However, the exactcutoff points chosen to distinguish each type of city are not critical.5

Table 4.1 illustrates that white reactions to black leadership are clearlydependent on racial demographics in the ways predicted by the informa-tion model. In minority white cities, white support for the same blackcandidate increased by an average of 16.3 percent. This gain roughlydoubled the level of white support in these cities – from 16.1 percent inblack challenger elections to 32.4 percent in black incumbent elections.In majority white cities, white support increased by an average of only

3 The majority white cities are Charlotte, Cleveland, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Minneapolis,Rockford, and Seattle. The racially balanced cities are Chicago, Dallas, Durham, Flint,Houston, New Haven, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. The minority whitecities are Atlantic City, Baltimore, Birmingham, Gary, Memphis, Newark, Oakland, andTrenton.

4 Grofman and Handley (1989) have found that congressional districts that are 40 to 60

percent black elect black representatives about half the time. Cameron and his coauthors(1996) have suggested that the point of equal opportunity to elect a black candidate isgenerally less than 50 percent black. The literature on schools has similarly found that ataround 50 percent white, the balance of power between white and black students is mostprecarious and the intensity of competition between races is highest (Longshore 1988;Crain, Mahard, and Narot 1982; Bullock 1976).

5 Alternate cutoffs (e.g. 40 to 60 percent white) lead to similar patterns of behavior acrosscities. Also, whether one institutes cutoffs based on the size of the white population, thesize of the black population, or the relative size of the two populations, the results areessentially the same. The main reason why these different specifications lead to similarresults is that most of these cities had very small Asian American and Latino populationsat the time that they elected black mayors. On average, 90 percent of the residents of thesecities were black or white. Thus, focusing on the size of the white population is essentiallythe mirror opposite of focusing on the black population. In large part because of the smallsize of their populations, Asian American and Latino voters tend to play a limited rolein the elections under consideration. Of course, there are exceptions, like Chicago, whereLatinos can provide the margin of victory for either a white- or black-led coalition. Giventhe relatively small size of the Latino and Asian American populations in these cities, it isextremely difficult to try to measure and assess their reactions to black leadership in anysystematic way.



table 4.1 Change in Political Behavior from Black Candidacy to BlackIncumbency: The Impact of the Racial Balance of Power

Change in:

Percent White Votefor Black Candidate

Margin ofVictory

PercentTurnout

Black IncumbentReelection Rate

Minority White 19.6 19.6 −6.4 100% (8 of 8)Racially Balanced −7.5 −7.7 −4.4 63% (5 of 8)Majority White 7.1 14.3 −9.9 100% (7 of 7)

6.2 percent (from 42.2 percent to 48.4 percent).6 And in racially balancedcities, white support actually decreased by an average of 2.9 percent.

Not surprisingly, these changes in the white vote affected the outcomeof each contest. Whether or not black incumbents won reelection wasgreatly dependent on whether they faced a racially balanced, minoritywhite, or majority white electorate. In the minority and majority whitecities, black incumbents won reelection every time, while in racially bal-anced cities, the black incumbent won reelection only about half of thetime (5 out of 8 cases). The margin of victory in black mayoral elec-tions was similarly dependent on the racial balance of power. On average,the margin of victory for the black candidate decreased by 7.7 percent-age points in racially balanced cities. In contrast, the margin of victoryincreased by an average of 19.6 percentage points in minority white citiesand 14.3 points in majority white cities. Measures of overall turnout con-form to this same pattern. The turnout decline in majority or minoritywhite cities seems to suggest that the often intense white mobilizationagainst the black challenger had faded by the time the candidate cameup for reelection. The somewhat smaller turnout decline in racially bal-anced cities, by contrast, suggests that white fears and concerns remainedrelatively high in these cities even when blacks ran as incumbents.

It would seem, then, that white reactions to black leadership closelymirror the predictions of the information model. In minority white cities,whites became much more accepting of black leadership. In majority white

6 The more limited increase in white support in majority white cities might at least inpart be due to the fact that white support is slowly approaching a maximum threshold.Candidates, after all, rarely get unanimous support. It is, however, worth noting thatmayoral elections are usually not close. The average margin of victory in mayoral electionsis 24 percentage points (Hajnal, Lewis, and Louch 2002). Given that successful mayoralcandidates typically win a large majority of the vote, it is unlikely that the 48 percentwhite support we see here is pushing a maximum threshold.



cities, change was positive, but not as strong. And, in racially balancedcities, whites were just as opposed to black incumbents as they were toblack challengers. All of this suggests that there is a link between thelevel of black control of the local political arena, information, and whitebehavior.

testing competing explanations

Could other more conventional political factors – candidate quality,endorsements, and the incumbent’s record – account for the differences inwhites’ reactions in different kinds of cities? To try to ascertain if changesin white behavior were in fact related to the information environmentrather than to other features of the local political arena, I undertookmore formal multivariate analysis of the change in the white vote. In thisanalysis, I incorporated the same range of features of the local politicalarena that I used in the investigation of black challenger and black incum-bent elections in Chapter 2. To assess the impact of basic features of thecampaign, I took into account changes in newspaper endorsements, theDemocratic Party endorsement, and the quality of the white opponent.To see if the black incumbent’s record affected the change in the whitevote, I included three features of the local environment that were likelyto have been most prominent in white voters’ minds, given the fears theyexpressed when black challengers first entered office: change in per capitaincome, change in median housing prices, and change in the local crimerate. To determine if the policy actions of the black mayor also mattered,I added a measure of the degree to which the black mayor’s administra-tion shifted spending from development to redistribution – presumably achange that would most dramatically benefit the black community at theexpense of at least some of the white community.7 Finally, to investigate ifthe racial content of the black candidate’s campaign influenced the whitevote, I included a measure of the degree to which it shifted from beingrace neutral to racially focused. Although I have tried to make this list ascomprehensive as possible, other factors in the local environment, such asthe local political culture, might also have played a role in these contests.Details about the coding and sources of each of the variables are includedin the statistical appendix.

7 In alternate tests, I also looked to see if greater pursuit of affirmative action in public hiringaffected changes in the white vote, but I found no link. The lack of an effect was likely dueto the fact that most black mayors pursued affirmative action at a very moderate pace.



The number of independent variables and the limited number of casesonce again stretch the limits of what an ordinary least-squares regressioncan do, but the results do seem to fit a clear pattern: where blacks havemore ability to control local events, whites seem to learn more from theirexperiences with black leadership and appear to be more willing to sup-port black incumbents.8 After controlling for an array of variables relatedto the campaign and the incumbent’s record, the results in Table 4.2 indi-cate that racial demographics have a substantial effect on changes in thewhite vote. All else being equal, the model suggests that white supportgrows 12 percentage points more in minority white cities than it does inracially balanced cities. The difference between white majority cities andracially balanced cities is not nearly as stark, but there is at least someindication that whites learn more in majority white cities than they doin racially balanced cities.9 Table 4.2 also indicates that racial control isnot the only variable that influences the white vote. Race enters into thecalculus of white voters in other ways. Black candidates who move awayfrom racialized campaigns toward more race-neutral campaigns tend togarner a larger share of the white vote. Similarly, when fears of increasingcrime are not borne out by experience with black mayoral leadership,white residents appear to grow more accepting of that leadership. Noneof the other features of the incumbent’s record or the campaign is sig-nificantly related to the white vote, but it is worth noting that for everyvariable in Table 4.2 the coefficient is in the right direction, and in somecases, such as party and newspaper endorsements, is reasonably close tobeing significant. It may be that better measures of the campaign and theincumbent’s record would reveal clearer relationships.

racial demographics and the tone of mayoral elections

The extent to which racial demographics shape both the information envi-ronment and white reactions can also be seen in the racial tone of elec-tions. Changes in the tone or racial mood of campaigns in each type ofcity follow a pattern very similar to the vote. In racially balanced cities,the reelection bids of black incumbents tend to retain a high level of

8 Alternate tests dropping some of the independent variables and bivariate correlations ledto roughly the same set of findings as those demonstrated in Table 4.2.

9 In the model in Table 4.2, the coefficient for the white majority is positive but not quitesignificant. Bivariate tests reveal a positive and significant correlation between change inthe white vote and a dummy variable for majority white cities.



table 4.2 Determinants of Change in White Support for the BlackCandidate1

Change in White Supportfor the Black Candidate

RACIAL CONTROLWhite Minority City2

0.18 (0.07)∗∗

White Majority City20.07 (0.06)

Percent Black 0.00 (0.26)

CAMPAIGN BASICSCandidate QualityChange in Quality of White Opponent −0.10 (0.11)EndorsementsChange in Democratic Party Endorsement 0.12 (0.14)Change in Local Newspaper Endorsement 0.14 (0.11)Racial Focus of the CampaignChange in Black Candidate’s Racial Focus −0.31 (0.13)∗∗

INCUMBENT’S RECORDLocal ConditionsChange in Per Capita Income 0.49 (0.72)Change in Median Housing Prices 0.18 (0.11)Change in Crime Rate −0.01 (0.00)∗

PolicyChange in Redistributive Spending −0.58 (0.45)Constant −0.24 (0.23)Adj. R-squared 0.45

N 25

Note: OLS regression. Figures in parentheses are standard errors.∗∗p < 0.01

∗p < 0.05

p < 0.10

1All variables and their sources are described in detail in Appendix B.2The excluded or comparison group is racially balanced cities (45% to 55% white).White minority coded as <45% white. Majority white coded as >55% white.

racial tension. In Chicago, for example, when Harold Washington ran forreelection in 1987, he faced opponents who did not hesitate to play therace card. The racial theme of the slogan chosen by Washington’s primaryopponent, Jane Byrne – “Jane Byrne: A Mayor for All Chicago” – wasclear to all involved. Similarly, Ed Vrdolyak, Washington’s main oppo-nent in the general election, made “bold use of racial themes throughouthis campaign” (Grimshaw 1992: 192). In Philadelphia, another raciallybalanced city, there was also considerable racial hostility in the blackincumbent election. When Wilson Goode ran for reelection in 1987, the



local media saw the election as “a campaign in black and white” (quotedin Adams 1994). Goode’s opponent, Frank Rizzo, was “pilloried by thepress as a race baiter” and at one point simply stated, “Vote white”(P. Taylor 1987). Accounts in Cleveland, another racially balanced city,also highlighted the role of race in the black incumbent’s first reelectionbid. In 1969, when Carl Stokes ran for reelection, the campaign focusedin large part on a police shootout in an African American neighborhood,and, according to Levine, “despite disclaimers from both sides, the raceissue again dominated Cleveland politics” (1974: 59).

In contrast, in minority and majority black cities, black incumbentreelection bids tended to be more subdued affairs that almost alwaysfocused on the incumbent’s record and the traditional array of policyissues that any candidate, black or white, would face. Norm Rice’s reelec-tion in Seattle was dubbed by many as a foregone conclusion. EmmanuelCleaver’s reelection bid in Kansas City was greeted with widespread apa-thy. And Richard Arrington’s reelection bid in Birmingham was so calmand racially civil that the national press ignored it. Arrington himselflamented: “Since we didn’t have any [racial] animosity, we didn’t get anyattention” (Russakof 1983). The tone of incumbent elections in thesecities suggests that uncertainty surrounding black leadership and fearsabout what might happen after the next election had, at least in part,been erased by the tenure of the first black mayor.

This pattern of change across cities has an important implication forthe literature on racial context and interracial dynamics. As discussed,much of the scholarship on racial context has found that the larger thelocal black population, the greater the level of racial animosity (see, e.g.,Key 1949; Giles and Hertz 1994). And indeed, Chapter 3 demonstrateda linear relationship between the size of the black population and thenegativity of white views. This chapter’s analysis suggests, however, thatonce a black candidate assumes an important leadership position, thesimple linear relationship no longer holds.10 Because the reality of blackcontrol turns out to be less menacing than the threat posed by the pos-sibility of black control, racial tension appears to peak in cities whereblack control is imminent but not yet in place. Thus, the racial divideoften remains exceptionally high in racially balanced cities and ironicallydeclines markedly in cities where blacks are more numerous and presum-ably more able to take over.

10 For a similar argument about racial balance, see Blalock (1967) and Longshore (1988).



table 4.3 The Impact of the Racial Balance ofPower on Black Incumbent Reelection Rates

City Demographics Incumbent Reelection Rate

Minority White 81% (61 of 75 cases)Racially Balanced 65% (13 of 20 cases)Majority White 77% (24 of 31 cases)

a broader range of cases

Information and racial control appear to play a key role in these twenty-six cities, but can they account for electoral outcomes across a wide rangeof cases? To answer this question, I once again looked at the outcomeof every black incumbent reelection bid in the twentieth century in everycity in the United States with over 50,000 people.11 When we shift to thismore complete set of cases, the same pattern emerges. Outcomes in blackincumbent elections across the United States have been strongly relatedto cities’ racial balance of power. As Table 4.3 reveals, in minority whitecities, black incumbents win almost all of their reelection bids (81 per-cent). In majority white cities, they are slightly less successful: they win77 percent of their reelection bids. But in racially balanced cities, blackincumbents win only 65 percent of the time.

The data presented in this chapter suggests that when whites can holdblack leaders accountable for the lack of negative change that occursunder their watch, then these leaders’ tenure in office will provide valuableinformation to white voters about the effects of black leadership. This,in turn, will lead to greatly increased white support and almost certainreelection. But in racially balanced cities, black mayoral control is oftentoo precarious and racial competition too intense for white residents toknow who is to blame or credit for their continued well-being. In suchcities, white fears remain, elections continue to be highly racialized, andblack politicians have a more difficult time getting reelected. In short,information and uncertainty appear to play a critical role in the decisionsof white voters.

11 Each city is also coded as majority white, racially balanced, or minority white at thetime of the election. The cutoffs are the same as those employed for the smaller data set:majority white (over 55 percent white), racially balanced (45 to 55 percent white), andminority white (under 45 percent white). Alternate tests that break down cities based onthe size of the black population or the relative sizes of the black and white populationsreveal similar patterns.



The pattern of white voting across cities that this chapter has iden-tified may have practical implications for redistricting decisions. Manyhave advocated the creation of more racially mixed districts, both becauseblacks have a good chance of winning office in this type of district andbecause they may maximize black substantive representation (Grofmanand Handley 1989; Lublin 1997; Cameron, Epstein, and Halloran 1996).My results indicate, however, that black politicians may have a more diffi-cult time getting reelected in racially balanced arenas and that the creationof racially competitive districts could actually lead to an increase in racialtension.12 It is by no means clear that the pattern we see across cities willbe found in legislative districts or other types of geographic contexts, andthus much more investigation of this phenomenon is required.13 Never-theless, those drawing the lines should at least begin to consider two newconcerns that have generally been previously overlooked: reelection ratesand the level of black-white conflict associated with different racial demo-graphics. Both of these concerns may lead legislators who favor greaterblack representation away from supporting the creation of racially bal-anced districts.

This chapter has shown that patterns of change in white support can belinked to the amount of control that black incumbents are able to exerciseover the local political arena. The patterns evident here certainly fit theexpectations of the information model. Thus, there is little doubt thatthe information model provides at least a plausible explanation of changesin white behavior. But these simple correlations do not actually show ushow information is or is not translated by white residents in a givencommunity. In order to connect changes in white behavior more directlyto changes in the information environment, in the next two chapters Iexamine two cases of black mayoral leadership in much more detail. Thegoal of these two chapters is to follow the process of racial learning andto directly link the actions of black incumbents to specific changes in theviews and actions of white residents.

12 Interestingly, as noted earlier, studies at the school level also suggest that racial tensionsmay peak in racially balanced communities (Longshore 1988).

13 These are obviously only two of the possible criteria by which a district can be judged.One might also want to consider how district lines affect substantive representation,descriptive representation, and a host of other issues (see Mansbridge 1999; Cameron,Epstein, and Halloran 1996; Lublin 1997; Swain 1995).


5

Black Mayoral Leadership in Los Angeles

None of the data presented to this point allows us to follow the courseof black leadership in a single city to see daily, monthly, or even yearlychanges. This is an important omission, because learning under blackincumbents is a process. What we have seen so far is a glimpse into the out-come of that process, but statistical data provide little insight into exactlywhat information is provided by black leadership, how that informationis transmitted, and ultimately how it is interpreted by city residents. Inthis chapter, I begin to address this omission by presenting more direct evi-dence of the process of racial learning. Specifically, I follow the actions ofblack mayoral leadership and the attitudes and actions of white residentsbefore, during, and after the transition from white to black leadershipin Los Angeles. The goal is to demonstrate as clearly as possible howinformation from black incumbency is translated into changes in whiteattitudes and behavior.

I focus on Los Angeles for both practical and theoretical reasons. Ona practical level, data constraints confined my choices to cities that hadsubstantial empirical records of white views during a black mayoralty.Unlike almost all other cities that have experienced black mayoral rep-resentation, Los Angeles has mayoral exit polls that allow for analysisof the white vote in several contests, and several of these polls includedquestions assessing white racial concerns. This allows me to gauge theeffects of racial views on the white vote at different points in time. Cou-pled with rich primary and secondary accounts of Mayor Tom Bradley’srecord in Los Angeles, these polls allow for perhaps the most compre-hensive assessment of white reactions to black leadership available in anycity.

103



On a theoretical level, moreover, Los Angeles under Tom Bradley offersan interesting test case. When he was elected in 1973, Bradley becameone of the first black mayors in the country, so his tenure marked oneof the first times that white Americans could gauge the consequences ofblack leadership in an important elected office. Thus, we might expectlearning to be particularly pronounced here. In addition, Bradley’s longtenure as mayor (twenty years) allows for a more refined assessment ofhow white attitudes and actions change over time. Even if the process oflearning is a slow one, it should still be evident in Los Angeles. A moreextensive account of the motivations behind my case selection is includedin Appendix C.

In this chapter, I assess three different aspects of the learning process.First, to what extent did a lack of information about the consequences ofblack leadership play a role in black challenger elections? If the informa-tion model is accurate, a lack of concrete information about the conse-quences of black leadership for the white community should be one of thecentral features of black challenger campaigns. To test this hypothesis, Idetail the views and concerns of white residents during Bradley’s two cam-paigns to become the city’s first black mayor, and evaluate the role racialconcerns played in the white vote in these two contests. Second, whatinformation did black incumbency provide? Here, I review Bradley’s pol-icy initiatives and their impact on the economic vitality of the white com-munity to show that Bradley’s tenure did little to harm white Angelenos.And third, was information provided by black leadership translated intochanges in white attitudes and behavior? In particular, did white resi-dents update their beliefs about blacks and black leadership? Again, if theinformation model is accurate, at least some whites should have taken thelimited impact of black leadership on the white community as a sign thatblack leaders were not out to get them, racial concerns should have playeda declining role in the white vote over time, and whites should have bemore willing to vote for a black candidate in subsequent elections. I testthis last set of hypotheses by looking at changes over time in overall whitesupport for Bradley, in the determinants of the white vote, and in the sen-timents expressed about Bradley. Once again, I contrast the informationmodel with a racial prejudice model and a white backlash model. If theracial prejudice model fits Los Angeles, there should have been no changein white views or actions under a black mayor. If the backlash model isaccurate, whites should have increased their efforts to try to reverse blackgains and oust black leadership.


Black Mayoral Leadership in Los Angeles 105

For this narrative of Los Angeles politics, I rely primarily on newspaperreporting and primary accounts of events in the city. However, I alsodraw on previous analyses when they provide further insight. All of thisis supplemented with in-depth analysis of two public opinion polls: oneconducted in 1969, the year of Bradley’s first mayoral bid and one from1980, the midway point of Bradley’s mayoral tenure. Both are describedin more detail in Appendix C.

black challenger elections: limited information

and white fear

To begin to assess the information model, I examined Tom Bradley’s twobids to become the first black mayor of Los Angeles (his unsuccessful bidfor the mayoralty in 1969 and his successful campaign in 1973) to see ifuncertainty about black leadership led to racial fears and opposition toBradley’s candidacy. The results closely fit the information model. Almostevery aspect of both elections points to acute racial concerns about TomBradley and widespread fear about how black leadership could affect thewhite community.

While the evidence is anecdotal in nature, the white Angelenos whowere interviewed in the days and weeks before the 1969 election wereoften very clear about their fears of black leadership. These individu-als regularly expressed deep-seated concerns about the potential conse-quences of black leadership for the white community. The comments of JoAnn Des Ruisseaux were typical: “I just don’t like all these Black Pantherpeople that are hanging around [Bradley’s] campaign. I know he deniesit, but where there’s smoke, there’s fire” (Reich 1973b). Many focusedon black in-migration as a real threat. One white resident lamented:“If we have a colored mayor we’ll have colored people pushing usout of the city. The whole city will be black if Bradley wins” (Reich1973a). A citizen from Encino echoed this concern about a black victory:“You know what this means? There’ll be blacks all over this place nextmonth. They’ll be all over Encino. You’re not gonna recognize this town”(Seidenbaum 1973). Others did not mention specific threats, but sug-gested that the consequences of Bradley’s election could be dire for thewhite community.

Perhaps the most persuasive evidence of the important role that uncer-tainty and white racial concerns played in these two contests comes fromanalysis of the white vote itself. Whether whites voted for or against



table 5.1 Key Factors Driving the Vote for the Challenger Tom Bradley1

Change in the Probabilityof Voting for Bradley (%)

RACIAL CONCERNSBradley Will Favor Black Interests –

Bradley Evenhanded67

Concerned About Black Gains – Not Concerned −54

THE WHITE INCUMBENT’S RECORDSatisfied With Public Services – Dissatisfied Not SignificantSatisfied With Economic Gains – Dissatisfied Not SignificantPOLITICAL IDEOLOGYConservative – Liberal 27

Republican – Democrat 37

RACIAL PREJUDICERacially Prejudiced – Not Racially Prejudiced Not Significant

1 Predicted probabilities derived from logistic regression in Table C.1 in Appendix C.

Bradley depended more than anything else on their concerns aboutBradley and black leadership. One poll from the 1969 runoff betweenBradley and Sam Yorty – who was running for reelection – is particularlyilluminating. In Table 5.1, I present an account of the main factors drivingthe white vote in that election.1 The predicted probabilities in the tableare derived from a logistic regression that assesses the effects of racialconcerns, Yorty’s record as an incumbent, racial prejudice, political ideol-ogy, and socioeconomic status. The survey, variables, and full model aredetailed in Appendix C.2

Several important conclusions emerge from this analysis. First, con-cerns about how black leadership would affect the white community dom-inated white voters’ decision making. Whether or not whites supportedBradley depended principally on the simple question of whether or notthey thought Bradley would serve black interests at the expense of whiteinterests. If a white respondent thought that Bradley “would show morefavoritism to his supporters than most other mayors,” that person was67 percent less likely to support Bradley than if the voter thought Bradleywould be evenhanded. Similarly, if whites were concerned about blackpolitical and economic gains and felt that blacks would “push themselves

1 There is, unfortunately, no comparable survey of white voters in 1973.2 The survey is a pre-election poll of white suburbanites in Los Angeles conducted by the

National Opinion Research Center shortly before the run-off election between Bradleyand Yorty.



where they’re not wanted,” they were 54 percent less likely to vote forBradley. Fears about losing out to blacks clearly were central to the whitevote.3

The other important and unique aspect of the Bradley-Yorty contestwas the fact that the white vote was unrelated to Yorty’s record as anincumbent in the mayor’s office. As Table 5.1 indicates, whether or notwhite residents were satisfied with city services under Yorty and whetheror not they were satisfied with their personal economic gains over theprevious five years had little effect on whether white voters chose Bradleyor Yorty. The white vote was not about the white candidate or the past.It was instead about the black candidate, the future, and concerns thatblack leadership might harm the white community.

At the same time, Table 5.1 reveals that racial concerns were not theonly factor that mattered in the white vote. Nonracial concerns, includingpolitical ideology and party identification, played a modest role in thecontest. Liberals and Democrats were somewhat more likely than con-servatives or Republicans to support Bradley – although the differencewas not as large as one would traditionally expect. Self-identified liber-als were only 27 percent more likely to support Bradley than those whoviewed themselves as conservative. In the end, Bradley received consider-ably more white support than other black challengers who were gainingoffice in other big cities at around the same time. Overall, he garnered32 percent of the white vote in 1969 and 46 percent in 1973 (Halley,Acock, and Greene 1976). By contrast, successful black challengers inCleveland, Gary, Newark, and Atlanta, the four other big cities electingblack mayors around the same time, won only between 15 and 17 percentof the white vote.

The fact that nonracial concerns did sway some white voters in LosAngeles and the relatively widespread white support for Bradley whenhe ran as a challenger is exactly what one would expect given that theblack community in Los Angeles was much smaller and posed less of athreat than the black population in these other majority black cities. In1969, Los Angeles was a majority white city, and African Americans madeup only 17 percent of the population. Los Angeles’ demographics meantthat whites would likely retain firm control of the local political arena,

3 Equally importantly, as Table 5.1 shows, being prejudiced against blacks had no significanteffect on the vote. Specifically, holding negative stereotypes of blacks (thinking blacksare less intelligent than whites) played no direct role. It was not simple prejudice thatstructured the vote, but expectations about the future and fears about black leadership.



even if Bradley were elected. Uncertainty played a role in Los Angelesbut concerns about black leadership in this majority white city were lesspronounced than were white fears in cities where blacks really could “takeover.”

The media in Los Angeles echoed this analysis of the white vote. Mostof the stories run by the Los Angeles Times highlighted in one way oranother the important role that white fears about black leadership playedin Bradley’s bids to become mayor.4 Kenneth Reich, in particular, saw “adistinct note of concern about a black man in the mayor’s office” (1973a).His interviews of white Angelenos “indicated that the racial issue remainshighly important this year.”5

White concerns about what might happen if blacks were allowed totake over also came through in the campaigns that Bradley and his oppo-nent ran. Yorty, in particular, designed his two campaigns against Bradleyto highlight all of the unknowns surrounding a black victory. In both 1969

and 1973, the theme of Yorty’s campaign was typified by the followingstatement: “We know what kind of a city we’ve got. We don’t know whatwe might get [if Bradley is elected]. So we’d be taking quite a chancewith this particular kind of candidate” (Bergholz 1973b). Time and timeagain, Yorty accused Bradley of being a radical who was anti-police andpro-communist. He repeatedly raised questions about the future of LosAngeles under black leadership. “Will your family be safe?” asked oneadvertisement. “Will your city be safe with this man?” queried another(Bollens and Geyer 1973). There was, Yorty argued, a real chance of“losing the city” (Boyarsky 1973c). In short, Yorty clearly felt that thebest way to defeat his black opponent was to play on white fears aboutthe unknowns surrounding black leadership.

Yorty was not the only candidate who realized that white Angelenoswere afraid of black leadership. Bradley also knew that concerns aboutblack leadership were widespread, and he did everything he could to tryto assuage those fears in his campaigns as a challenger. By avoiding any

4 See for example, Boyarsky 1973a; 1973b; 1973c; 1973d; 1973e; Bergholz 1973a; Paegel1973; and Reich (1973a; 1973b.

5 More extended scholarly accounts that were written in the years after the elections reaf-firmed the central role of racial fears. In fact, it is quite remarkable that of the dozen orso studies that examined the two elections in depth, every single one concluded that fearand uncertainty plagued Bradley’s bid for the mayoralty. The following accounts all pointto the critical role uncertainty played in Bradley’s two challenger elections: Bollens andGeyer 1973; Hahn, Klingman, and Pachon 1976; Halley, Acock, and Greene 1976; Jeffriesand Ransford 1972; Kaufman 1998; Kinder and Sears 1981; Litwin 1981; Maullin 1971;Payne and Ratzan 1986; Pettigrew 1972; Robinson 1976; Sears and Kinder 1971; Shiesl1990; Sonenshein 1989; 1993; Watson 1984.



mention of racial issues, downplaying his connections to black activists,and focusing his campaign on law and order, Bradley made it clear that hiswas not a “black” campaign. He did not bring in any well-known blackleaders from outside the city, he campaigned largely in white neighbor-hoods, and he did not talk about the issue of race except to occasionallydeny that it was an issue. As Sonenshein put it, “Bradley forces went togreat lengths to reassure white and Hispanic voters that Bradley wouldbe fair to all” (1989: 343).

After he lost in 1969, Bradley and his advisors were certain thatracial fears had cost him the election. They were determined not tolet white fears dominate his second challenger bid (Payne and Ratzan1986b). Thus, in 1973, Bradley’s efforts to reassure white voters greatlyincreased. He repeatedly stressed his ties to the Los Angeles Police Depart-ment and focused much of his campaign on conservative law and orderissues (Boyarsky 1973c). When Yorty focused media attention on a BlackPanther who had endorsed Bradley, Bradley’s response was swift anddecisive: “I do not seek, I do not want, and I reject the endorsement.I have always been opposed to such a philosophy” (Paegel 1973).

What all of this evidence, both quantitative and qualitative, suggests isthat uncertainty about black leadership was widespread among white res-idents in Los Angeles when Bradley ran as a challenger. Bradley may havehad a record as a moderate on the city council, but whites in Los Angeleshad never experienced an African American in control. The experiencesthat white Angelenos did have – the Watts Riot, periodic violent racialflare-ups, and growing demands from the black community – undoubtedlyled many to expect the worst.

the information effects of bradley’s tenure

In this section, I review Bradley’s tenure in an effort to see what his agendalooked like, how well he was able to enact that agenda, and how theeconomic and social well-being of white Los Angeles changed under hismayoralty. The bottom line is that if whites were watching Bradley tosee what black leadership meant to the white community, what they sawand experienced under Bradley suggested that black leadership was not aserious threat to their well-being.

Bradley’s Pro-Development Agenda

Although there were some areas in which Bradley pushed for modest gainsfor blacks, the main theme of his administration, according to almost



all observers of Los Angeles politics, was economic development, andin particular downtown development (Saltzstein 1986; Sonenshein 1993;Regalado 1991; 1992; M. Davis 1992). As part of this pro-developmentagenda, Bradley maintained a fiscally sound administration. In his firstyears, he cut city expenditures by 10 percent and was able to balance thecity budget without raising taxes (Payne and Ratzan 1986b). There wasalso no real redistribution of income or any real change in spending pri-orities under Bradley (Regalado 1992; Jackson and Preston 1994; Ander-son 1996).6 Over the twenty-year period of his tenure, local governmentredistributive expenditures grew only 0.9 percent as a percentage of totalgovernment expenditures (Bureau of the Census Bureau 1964–2003).

The core of Bradley’s policy agenda had little, if anything, to do withrace. Bradley, in fact, tried hard to avoid racial controversies and regularlyvowed to serve all racial groups. In his first speech as mayor, he pledgedthat he would “be mayor of all of Los Angeles” (Payne and Ratzan 1986a:135). And on most racial issues, Bradley’s regime was silent (Jackson 1990;Sonenshein 1993). As Sonenshein has noted, “On such tinderbox issuesas school busing, Bradley has been utterly invisible” (1990: 40). In 1979,when an LAPD officer shot Eulia Love, a black woman, aggravating racialtensions, Bradley’s response was “feeble,” according to many observers(Anderson 1996). Bradley’s administration did provide some real, con-crete benefits for blacks in the city. In a regime that many felt was atleast “initially transformative,” Bradley fought to ensure greater over-sight over the Los Angeles Police Department, and he attempted to openthe doors of city government to previously excluded groups (Sonenshein1993). Minority contracting expanded, and more blacks were hired ascommissioners and in other positions of authority (Jackson and Preston1994).7 Bradley also helped to increase the number and size of federalgrants for poverty and public housing spending when these funds werewidely available in the 1970s (Keiser 1997; Sonenshein 1993). But theseefforts were modest. Under Bradley, black employment in city govern-ment only increased from 20 percent in the Yorty years to 24 percent inthe 1990s (Sonenshein 1993; Joyce 1994). Indeed, it is unclear whetheraffirmative action in Los Angeles proceeded at a faster pace than it did

6 The biggest change in government under Bradley, according to Sonenshein (1993) was theincorporation of business. As one Chamber of Commerce executive put it, “Business wasmade a managing partner in running the city” (Litwin 1981: 87).

7 Black commission appointments increased from 6 percent under Yorty to 20 percent in1991 (Sonenshein 1993).



in other cities without black mayors (Jackson and Preston 1994; Litwin1981; Eisinger 1983).

In short, Bradley did not show any sign that he was interested in a“black takeover.” All of these actions – and inactions – on the part of theBradley administration likely served to reassure white Los Angeles thatblack leadership was relatively safe for the white community.

Ongoing White Prosperity

More importantly, the end result of Bradley’s tenure was ongoing whiteprosperity and no change in the relative economic status of white andblack Los Angeles. If anything, whites gained under Bradley, while muchof the black community fell behind. Los Angeles experienced an extendedperiod of economic expansion during Bradley’s tenure (Litwin 1981;Oliver, Johnson, and Farel 1993; Ong and Blumenberg 1996; Regalado1992; Schwada 1989; Sojo and Scott 1996). At a time when many othercities went downhill, Bradley helped to transform Los Angeles into thelargest industrial center in the United States (Sonenshein 1993). Over-all, the median family income of the city’s residents grew by 5.3 percentbetween 1969 and 1989, marginally better than the average for urbanAmerica (Ong and Blumenberg 1996). Importantly for the white popula-tion, these gains had a disproportionate impact on the upper end of thewage distribution. Of the hundreds of thousands of new jobs created dur-ing Bradley’s administration, most were for highly skilled, well-educatedwhite workers (Ong and Blumenberg 1996). Most of the developmentoccurred downtown, where white business interests benefited (Sonenshein1993). On the other end of the spectrum, in Los Angeles’ poor black com-munities, there were limited positive developments; if anything, economicfortunes deteriorated under Bradley.8

8 Bradley’s mayoralty did little to alleviate poverty and the variety of social ills that plaguedmuch of black Los Angeles (Anderson 1996; Bunch 1990; M. Davis 1992; Keiser 1997;Jackson and Preston 1994; Oliver, Johnson, and Farrel 1993; Ong and Blumenberg 1996).Areas such as Southcentral Los Angeles suffered a slow decline. In Southcentral between1973 and 1990, the poverty rate, the unemployment rate, and the proportion of residentson welfare all grew (Ong and Blumenberg 1996). By 1990 in Southcentral, unemploy-ment exceeded 50 percent, welfare dependency stood at 25 percent, the poverty ratewas 30 percent, and 56 percent of the adult population were high school dropouts (LosAngeles Times 1992). In other words, the efforts of Bradley’s administration “stoppedshort of the population most in need” (Anderson 1996: 351). The fact that Bradley hadnot met black expectations was confirmed by considerable disenchantment within theblack community, which became more and more evident as Bradley’s tenure went on(M. Davis 1992; Sonenshein 1990).



The racial status quo that had seemed to many to be threatened bythe onset of black leadership survived the twenty years under Bradley.A variety of economic and social indicators revealed no change in therelative well-being of blacks and whites during Bradley’s tenure. In 1969

in Los Angeles, black male median earnings (controlling for educationand labor force experience) were 70 percent of white earnings. In 1989,the figure was a virtually identical 69 percent (Ong and Blumenberg1996). Income inequality data reveal an increasing gap between wealthy,mostly white Los Angeles and poor, disproportionately black Los Ange-les over the same period. Between 1969 and 1989, the GINI coefficientgrew from 0.37 to 0.44, and the poverty rate increased from 10.9 to 15.1percent (Ong and Blumenberg 1996). As the Los Angeles Times noted in1989, “An already yawning racial gulf between rich and poor is growing”(2: 6). For anyone who watched, the lesson was clear: whites could sup-port blacks without hurting their own well-being.9

did whites learn in los angeles?

Did whites, in the end, learn this lesson, updating their beliefs aboutBradley and black leadership? If the information model is correct andBradley’s tenure did demonstrate to white residents that black leadershipwas not in conflict with white interests, then uncertainty about Bradleyand black leadership should have declined. And as uncertainty declined,perceptions about the meaning of black leadership should have changed,racial concerns should have faded in importance in subsequent elections,and more and more whites should have supported Bradley. All of this isborne out by the evidence.

Growing White Support and Falling Turnout

The most obvious change in white behavior was increased white supportfor Bradley’s leadership. When Bradley was first elected, he faced recordwhite turnout, and most white voters voted against him. But as Table 5.2

9 It is also important to note that Bradley’s governing coalition faced little serious opposi-tion during most of his tenure (Jackson 1990; Sonenshein 1993). Even though Bradley’smayoral powers were somewhat limited, what he proposed was often pretty close towhat Los Angeles got. Thus, white residents would have had a hard time pointing toanyone else in the city as being responsible for the direction of policy under Bradley’sadministration.



table 5.2 White Support for Bradley Over Time

White Vote forBradley (%) Voter Turnout (%)

1969 32 76

1973 44 75

1977 53 42

1981 58 45

1985 62 35

1989 47 23

illustrates, as white residents gained more and more experience with blackleadership, most of this opposition faded. In Bradley’s first reelection bid,white support increased to 53 percent, and he won all but one city councildistrict. By 1979, polls showed Bradley with a 76 percent approval rat-ing. One year later, the Los Angeles Times exclaimed, “Bradley is, withinthe liberal community, unassailable” (Sonenshein 1993: 179). In 1981,Bradley’s approval reached 85 percent, and he won 58 percent of thewhite vote that year. Four years later, he garnered a record 68 percent ofthe city vote, capturing 62 percent of the white vote and winning everydistrict – including the conservative white Valley districts that had mobi-lized in 1969 and 1973 in such great numbers to prevent what they thoughtwas a black takeover. It was only after scandals and a poor showing inthe California gubernatorial race tarnished his reputation that Bradley’swinning percentage dropped for the first time, in 1989. He chose not torun for a sixth term in 1993.

Remarkably, over a sixteen-year period, Bradley’s support in the whitecommunity nearly doubled. A losing black challenger had been trans-formed into a five-term mayoral juggernaut.10 By the end of his tenure,Bradley’s support among white residents was not too different from hissupport among black Angelenos. In 1990, blacks on average rated Bradleyas a 68 on a 100-point feeling thermometer. Whites weren’t that far behind

10 Analysis of the mayoral vote in key city council districts confirms Bradley’s growingsupport among all sectors of white Los Angeles. Over the five elections from 1969 to1985, Bradley’s support among white liberals grew from 51 to 58 to 62 to 69 to 74

percent. Among conservatives, the increase in support was not nearly as dramatic, but itwas nevertheless impressive. Over the same five elections, conservative white support forBradley grew from 31 percent to 50 percent. Among moderate white and Latino wards,Bradley’s support went from 44 percent in 1973 to 60 percent in 1985 (Sonenshein1993).



at 57.11 In short, by the end of Bradley’s tenure, something resemblingracial consensus had crept into the mayoral politics of the city.

The direction of the vote was not the only sign in Los Angeles that racialconcerns surrounding black leadership had declined. Another possibleindication of diminished fear was the steep drop in voter turnout. Turnoutin Bradley’s mayoral contests plummeted from a record high of 75 percentin 1969 to 42 percent in 1977, 37 percent in 1981, 35 percent in 1985, and23 percent in 1989. The 23 percent turnout in 1989 represents a recordlow for the city, and it occurred despite the fact that many observersfelt that Bradley had a real chance of losing that year. The fear that hadmotivated so many white residents to try to prevent a black takeoverappears largely to have disappeared over the course of Bradley’s tenure.

The Declining Role of Race Among White Voters?

A less obvious but equally important change under Bradley was the dimin-ishing role racial concerns played in campaigns and in the white vote. Justas the information model predicts, the racial concerns that dominated thecalculus of white voters in Bradley’s two challenger candidacies slowlyfaded with time. As each year went by and whites gained more expe-rience with black leadership, Bradley’s record as an incumbent becamemore and more critical to white voters.

Bradley’s first reelection bid in 1977 began the trend and is particularlyillustrative. In many ways, Bradley faced a difficult electoral context thatyear. In the interim four years, Los Angeles voters had moved markedlyto the right. As the election results would later show, in most of the city’smunicipal and school board elections, voters opted for more conservativecandidates than they had in the past (Sonenshein 1993). Moreover, dur-ing the campaign, Los Angeles was facing a racially divisive school busingcontroversy, a highly unfavorable setting for any black candidate.12 AlanRobbins, Bradley’s chief opponent, tried to use this context to his advan-tage. Just as Yorty had done before him, Robbins attempted to make racerelevant in the campaign, repeatedly trying to incite white racial concernsabout Bradley and black leadership by raising the issues of crime and

11 The increase in white support for Bradley is even more impressive when one considers theconservative drift of the Los Angeles electorate. Bradley was increasingly successful dur-ing a period in which Los Angeles’ white voters favored fiscally conservative propositions(e.g. Prop. 13 in 1978, Prop. A in 1981, and Prop. 1 in 1985).

12 All through the campaign, the busing controversy received more coverage than the cam-paign did.



busing, among others. He accused Bradley of allowing the school system“to be set on an almost irreversible path toward extensive forced bus-ing” (Reich 1977a). He criticized Bradley’s cuts in police spending, andhe accused Bradley of being soft on crime. He even went so far as to handout thousands of rape whistles. As one city hall observer noted, “Bradleyis black and the whole Robbins campaign is subtly directed toward play-ing upon it” (Reich, 1977a). In the end, though, Robbins’s efforts failed.13

Although the attention that busing received indicated that race was stillan important issue in Los Angeles, the results of the election suggestedthat most whites did not fear Bradley. With Bradley running as an incum-bent, there was no run-off. There was no widespread white mobilization.In short, there was no contest. White voters supported Bradley in largenumbers, white business provided Bradley with strong financial backing,and turnout declined precipitously. In contrast to the 1969 and 1973 elec-tions, racialized voting did not follow a racialized campaign.

On this point, most observers agreed:

There were two overriding reasons for Mayor Tom Bradley’s overwhelmingvictory – his own substantial record of achievement over the past four years andthe diminution of race as a factor in Los Angeles politics. The fact that Bradley isblack was significant in his two previous campaigns for mayor. There were simi-lar, more indirect efforts this year to place a negative emphasis on race. . . . But thevoters, to their credit, saw more merit in Bradley’s pledge to work for peacefulcompliance. . . . We also commend the voters of this city for appraising Bradley onthe basis of performance, not of race. (Los Angeles Times 1977)

Even Bradley agreed that racial concerns had largely dropped out of theequation. In a Los Angeles Times article entitled “Race Banished as VoteIssue,” Bradley was quoted as saying, “You know that this city couldrise above race, could rise above economic circumstances, could rise abovepolitics, to elect a mayor on his qualifications, character, and confidencein the progress of ideas” (Reich 1977b). Bradley went on to claim thatwhite voters had lost their fear of black leadership. They had learned thata black mayor was not the end of the world: “This time, there was notsuch an important issue to be proved. . . . [White voters] were sure enough,ready, and willing to vote for a man who was black” (Reich 1977b). Inshort, the 1977 election provided ample evidence that experience under

13 This time, against Robbins, Bradley did not even have to counter with a conservativelaw and order campaign, as he had done before, against Yorty, to assuage white fears.Instead, he simply campaigned on his record in office.



Bradley as mayor had allayed white fears concerning Bradley the blackcandidate.

Subsequent elections told a similar story. The 1981 election was analmost exact repeat of 1977. In 1981, Bradley faced his old nemesis,Yorty. And Yorty went with the same white fear campaign he had usedin 1969 and 1973. Race, crime, and fear were the order of the day forthe campaign. “People are afraid in this town. They’re afraid to go out atnight and afraid to go out in the daytime,” Yorty declared (Dowie 1981).Though the campaign was the same, the reaction was not. This timearound, Yorty was sharply criticized for his racist attacks and his effortsto incite white fear. As the campaign went on, in fact, Yorty was forcedto tone down his attacks (Payne and Ratzan 1986b). Also in contrast to1973, Bradley did not respond to Yorty’s vitriol. Bradley’s commercialsdid not mention Yorty or his tactics. There was none of the law and ordercampaign that Bradley had used in 1973 to assuage white fears. There wasalso little mention of his 21-year career on the LAPD. Bradley ran on hisrecord as mayor, and the results were impressive. He won 64 percent ofthe vote to Yorty’s 32 percent, and he carried every council district in thecity. Bradley became the first mayor of Los Angeles to win a third termwithout a run-off. A Los Angeles Times editorial applauded the city’swhite voters for ignoring Bradley’s race: “Just as encouraging was theabsence of race as a dominant issue in Sam Yorty’s battle to unseat theblack mayor” (Los Angeles Times 1981).

The story of the 1985 and 1989 mayoral elections is somewhat dif-ferent, but the conclusion is the same. In both elections, race and racialissues took a back seat to other city and voter concerns. In 1985, for thefirst time, Bradley’s main opponent did not use race in his campaign. JohnFerraro did run a negative attack campaign, but the issue was never race.Unlike previous elections, there was a plethora of issues to choose from.Ferraro tried to win votes by coming out against a city metro line and byvoicing opposition to a proposed property tax hike. The two big issues inthe election turned out to be Bradley’s support for offshore oil drilling andwhether or not Bradley would run for governor the next year. In Payneand Ratzan’s view, “The issues were the focus of the campaign, and raceseemed, for the first time, to be of little concern to either the candidates orthe voters” (1986b: 329). In 1989, the names of the challengers changed,but the script was largely repeated. Race had ceased to be the centralelement in Los Angeles mayoral elections.

Empirical analysis of local newspaper coverage helps to confirm thedeclining role of race in mayoral campaigns. In Bradley’s challenger



table 5.3 Main Factors Driving Approval of Bradley

Impact on Support for:

Bradley theChallenger

Bradley theIncumbent

RACIAL CONCERNSConcerned About Black Gains – Not Concerned 58% Not SignificantINCUMBENT’S RECORDSatisfied With the City Conditions – Dissatisfied Not Significant −46%

Note: Predicted probabilities derived from logistic regressions in Table C.2 in Appendix C.

campaigns, race was the issue. Both in 1969 and 1973, race dominatedcampaign coverage (Graber 1984). Far outweighing all other issues, racewas mentioned in half of all coverage of the 1973 election (Sylvie 1995).For anyone who cared to listen, read, or watch, Bradley’s mayoral chal-lenge was more than anything else a racial battle between a black and awhite candidate. But all of this changed after Bradley was elected mayor.In Bradley’s mayoral reelection bids, the media slowly ceased to focuson race. Graber’s (1984) analysis of campaign coverage in Los Angelesreveals a substantial decrease in the frequency with which the issue ofrace was raised in local newspapers. Bradley’s race had been replaced byBradley’s record.

views of bradley as challenger and incumbent

Another way to see if experience with black leadership fundamentallyaltered white views in Los Angeles is to compare the factors driving whitesupport of Bradley as a challenger with the factors driving white supportof Bradley as an incumbent. If the information model is accurate, thiskind of comparison should reveal a sharp decline in the importance ofracial concerns and a sharp increase in the importance of the incumbent’srecord. This is exactly what we see in Table 5.3. The table contrasts thefactors driving white approval of Bradley in 1969, when he first ran asa challenger, with the factors driving white approval of Bradley in 1980,after he had already led the city for seven years.14 The predicted proba-bilities in the table are derived from two regressions that assess the effectsof racial concerns, the incumbent’s record, racial prejudice, political

14 I focus on the 1980 poll because it is the only citywide poll during Bradley’s administrationthat includes measures of white racial attitudes.



ideology, and individual socioeconomic status. The surveys, variables,and full models are detailed in Appendix C.

The contrast between white views and concerns before Bradley waselected and white views and concerns seven years into Bradley’s tenure isdramatic. As the first column of Table 5.3 illustrates, when Bradley ran asa challenger, the election was largely about racial concerns. Fears aboutthe possible consequences of black leadership dominated the white vote,and the incumbent’s record played no role. Whites’ support for Bradley,the black challenger, over Yorty, the white incumbent, was unaffectedby their feelings about how well the city was doing. Rather, support forBradley was almost wholly shaped by concerns about the future and thefear that Bradley would serve black interests.

In sharp contrast, views of Bradley the incumbent were not significantlytied to racial concerns. The racial fear that had shaped the white vote inBradley’s challenger election appears to have faded as whites gained expe-rience under Tom Bradley and as the reality of black mayoral leadershipproved better than expected. Even more important, as the informationmodel would predict, support for Bradley as an incumbent was largelya function of the information that his tenure had provided. If whitesthought the city had fared well under Bradley, they generally supportedhim. Those who felt “things in Los Angeles” were going well were 46

percent more likely to have a favorable view of Bradley than those whofelt that Los Angeles was faring poorly. In other words, the key factordriving white views of black leadership was Bradley’s policy record. Andsince the majority of whites thought the city had fared well under Bradley,Bradley’s record was critical to his ongoing success.15

Whites who were interviewed in greater depth in the years after Bradleyentered office echoed this transformation and in so doing highlightedthe important role that information played. One white resident of LosAngeles put it this way: “A lot of people were very suspicious and fearfulbefore Bradley got in. But they never say anything now. I’m sure theyhave changed their opinions. . . . Most important, he is a good person.Whether he is black or white is immaterial” (boatshop worker interviewedby the US News and World Report 1975). Mark Murphy, the editor of the

15 Additional analysis suggests that Bradley’s record on race was also critical. When aquestion asking about whether or not black-white relations had improved over the courseof Bradley’s tenure was added to the incumbent regression in Table 5.3, it was significant.All else being equal, whites who felt that black-white relations had improved over thecourse of Bradley’s tenure were 21 percent more likely to approve of Bradley’s mayoraltythan those who thought that race relations had deteriorated.



Los Angeles Times, expressed a similar opinion: “Tom Bradley is beyondblack in the eyes of most of the people of L.A. Most of us think of himsimply as our mayor” (US News and World Report 1975).

Bradley was also well aware of this change in white perceptions. Indeed,he felt that it was one of the greatest accomplishments of his career, bothfor the city and for the country (Ingwerson 1981): “Race, in my judg-ment, was not a relevant issue. Never should have been. But it took theexperience of the people to be convinced that it should not and would notbecome a factor in how you serve the interests of this city. And havingseen that demonstration, I don’t think anybody can make a case now orin the future that the color of a candidate’s skin is a factor and should beof any significant concern” (Ingwerson 1981).

Pollsters, too, knew that experience with Bradley and black leadershiphad transformed white views. In Bradley’s two challenger elections, thecommon view among political pundits was that racial concerns aboutblack leadership were an important liability that prevented many, if notmost, white voters from supporting him. As one prominent pollster put it,“In essence, Tom Bradley contributed to the [white] backlash sentimentby being black in a de facto segregated society” (Maullin 1971: 51). Butaccording to the same pollsters, just a few years later, something hadchanged for Bradley the incumbent. Bradley was widely recognized as animportant asset to his liberal coalition. In this revised analysis, Bradley, theman, was the key to his electoral success. At the end of Bradley’s tenure,Sonenshein wrote: “In the broadest sense, a major resource of the coalitionhas been Bradley’s popularity. This public appeal is the product of his styleand of the meaning attached to having a successful Black mayor” (1993:185). Similarly, in an article in 1989 that marveled at Bradley’s abilityto avoid criticism and gain reelection, Schwada concluded, “Because he’spolitically bland and non-threatening, he can move in all circles” (1989:102). Bradley’s tenure and the information it provided had transformedblack leadership from being a major threat to the white community intosomething that sparked little to no negative reaction.

The lessons from this study of Los Angeles’ mayoral politics, then, arefairly clear. Racial learning did occur in Los Angeles. White support forBradley was never absolute. Many white residents never voted for TomBradley, and a large number never trusted him or black leadership. Butmany white residents did change their minds about Tom Bradley and blackleadership. Just as the information model predicts, experience with blackmayoral leadership appears to have led to a fundamental transformationof white views and a greater willingness to support the black incumbent.



After living for years under Tom Bradley, white Angelenos’ uncertaintyabout black leadership faded and was replaced by a much more reasonedand positive assessment of black leadership and the gradual diminutionof a black-white divide in the mayoral politics in the city. By enacting afairly racially neutral agenda that helped ensure ongoing white prosper-ity, Bradley had proven to many whites that black leadership was worthsupporting.

At the same time, it is important to note that by focusing exclusively onmayoral politics under Bradley this chapter has obscured three potentiallyimportant trends. First, by focusing on Tom Bradley’s words and actions,this chapter has ignored a range of factors outside of black leadership thatcould have contributed to changes in the white vote in Los Angeles. Overthis time period, there were, for example, fairly dramatic changes in theracial demographics of the city and the state. If rapid Latino and AsianAmerican immigration represented more of a threat to whites than didthe presence of a relatively small and stable black population, then grow-ing support for Bradley might signal less about acceptance of blacks andmore about growing fears of Latino and Asian American power.16 Othertrends, such as the migration of white voters into the city and the state,continued economic growth across the state, and variations in the ideo-logical leaning of the state’s voters, could also have influenced the whitevote. Although racial learning seems to have played an important role, itis not at all clear that it was the only factor affecting the white vote in LosAngeles over this period.

A second missing feature of this chapter is a discussion of race rela-tions outside the arena of mayoral politics. This is an important omis-sion because an exclusive focus on mayoral politics obscures consider-able racial discord in the city. Black mayoral leadership may have had animportant effect on white political behavior, but it is not clear how farthat racial learning process extended. Even a cursory examination of racerelations in the city reveals that black representation is no panacea forthe array of racial conflicts facing the city, and the nation. Bradley’s initialvictory appears to have lessened racial tensions across the city, and fora decade few instances of severe racial conflict erupted. But subsequentdevelopments reveal ongoing racial divides in the city. The 1992 riotsare the most obvious example of the continued importance of race in

16 The fact that whites in California used direct democracy to target Latinos more thanblacks or any other group over this period lends some credence to this theory (Hajnal,Gerber, and Louch 2002).



Los Angeles, and there have been many other episodes of racial conflict –some of which have repeated old patterns, and others that have demon-strated new tensions (Fears 1998; Gold 2001; Newton 1998).17 It is clearthat whites, blacks, Latinos, and Asian Americans continue regularly todisagree over how the city’s resources should be allocated. In the end,experience with black leadership is unlikely to be able to alter the under-lying interests of any of these groups. If blacks, whites, Latinos, andAsian Americans truly want different policies, minority representationwill do little to end racial conflict. If, however, members of these groupswant the same things from their government, then minority representa-tion may help them to recognize their similar interests. Thus, the lessonfrom Los Angeles’ recent history is an optimistic one only in a very limitedsense.

Finally, a focus on black leadership overlooks important develop-ments in Asian American and Latino leadership in the city. The unsuc-cessful mayoral candidacies of Michael Woo in 1993 and AntonioVillaraigosa in 2001 and the successful mayoral bid of Villaraigosa in2005 highlight a range of new and extremely variable racial divisions.Woo’s candidacy resulted in a fairly strong inter-minority coalition andseemingly widespread white opposition to Asian American leadership.18

Villaraigosa’s 2001 bid pointed to a sharp black-Latino divide and onlysomewhat less widespread white opposition to minority leadership.19 AndVillaraigosa’s 2005 electoral victory resulted in a much more moderateblack-Latino divide and sharply increased white support for the Latinocandidate. Chapter Seven will look more closely at these new forms ofminority leadership. However, it may be too early to offer much in theway of definitive generalizations about how Asian American and Latinoleadership will ultimately affect racial dynamics in Los Angeles and othercities. The mixed results we see in these three elections and the, as of yet,small number of cases of Latino and Asian American leadership make itdifficult to reach any conclusions.

17 The increasingly central battle between blacks and Hispanics over each group’s politicalrepresentation in the city is perhaps the most important new facet of the city’s racialdynamic.

18 Woo captured 69 percent of the Asian American vote, 86 percent of the black vote, and57 percent of the Latino vote but only 33 percent of the white vote (Kaufman 1998).At least some of this white opposition could, however, have been generated by Woo’sstrongly liberal stances on a range of issues.

19 In the 2001 primary, according to a Los Angeles Times poll, only 26 percent of whitevoters supported either of the two white candidates and in the general election, 59 percentof white voters in the city opposed Villaraigosa.



Another question this study of Los Angeles cannot answer is why somecities do not conform to the same pattern of growing white acceptance ofblack leadership. As we saw in Chapter 4, in a small minority of cities,whites respond to black leadership with ongoing white opposition andpersistent racial tension. In Chapter 6, I follow the course of black mayoralleadership in Chicago to try to understand why whites in racially balancedcities do not change their minds about black leadership.

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6

Black Mayoral Leadership in Chicago

Although black representation in most cases leads to decreased racialtension and greater acceptance of black incumbents, there are a selectnumber of cities where racial tension remains high, voting continues tobe highly racially polarized, and few new white voters begin to supportblack leaders despite years under black leadership. The goal of this chapteris to look much more closely at the course of black leadership and whitelearning in one such city to try to understand and explain the lack ofchange.

Chicago represents perhaps the most famous case of ongoing whiteresistance.1 Voting figures in the city tell a story of unrelenting white oppo-sition to black leadership. Harold Washington actually lost white supportwhen he ran for reelection and none of the eight black candidates whohave sought the mayoralty after Harold Washington’s tenure has managedto garner more than 10 percent of the white vote in a primary or generalelection. Whites in the city seem no more willing to support black mayoralleadership today than they were in the days before Washington assumedoffice. The obvious question is why has experience with black leader-ship produced little, if any, change? Why didn’t white voters in Chicagobegin to accept and support black mayoral leadership as they did in othercities?

1 Another important reason to focus on Chicago is the extensive empirical record on may-oral and racial politics in Chicago. A range of primary accounts and a number of in-depthpolls detail white attitudes and views before, during, and after Harold Washington’stenure as mayor allowing for a detailed assessment of the information model and itsalternatives.

123



In Chapter 1, I suggested that information and control were the criticalvariables explaining variation across cities – in particular, in accountingfor the lack of change in a small number of racially balanced cities, suchas Chicago. Racially balanced cities are different, I argued, for two rea-sons. First, in racially balanced cities, black incumbency provides littleinformation to white residents because it is unclear whether the black orthe white community is in control of the local political arena, and as aresult it is unclear who should be blamed or credited for conditions in thecity. Rather than experiencing the effects of a black mayoralty, white resi-dents are apt to witness a battle for control between black and white elitesthat ends in stalemate. Second, the precarious balance of power betweenthe black and white communities in racially balanced cities means thatany additional black victory takes on added significance, as any blackvictory could lead to a black takeover. The limited information providedby experience with black leadership and the impending possibility of realblack control should, according to the information model, prevent whitesupport for black leadership from growing and in some cases even inspirewhites to increase their efforts to prevent a black takeover.

To see if this information story can account for the lack of change inwhite political behavior in Chicago, I will address a series of questionsabout three different stages in the racial learning process. First, did whitefears about the possibility of black leadership in Chicago mirror whiteconcerns in other cities? Second, how does the information provided byblack leadership in the city of Chicago differ from the information pro-vided by black leadership in most other cities? In particular, did HaroldWashington’s tenure as mayor provide whites with less credible evidenceabout the consequences of black leadership? Third, is a lack of informa-tion reflected in ongoing white fears and continued white resistance toblack leadership?

This review of these different stages in Chicago suggests that a lack ofcredible information can plausibly account for ongoing white resistancein the city. Harold Washington’s tenure provided much less information towhite residents than other cases of black leadership because Washingtonwas prevented by a white-led coalition in the city council from enactinghis agenda. Since a black agenda was never realized, white residents didnot know what would happen if a black mayor actually got control of thecity. The situation was exacerbated by the fact that blacks were movingcloser to achieving control of the city’s political apparatus. Toward theend of Washington’s tenure, his coalition won two seats on the city councilto create an even 25:25 split. Another loss at that point could easily have


Black Mayoral Leadership in Chicago 125

pushed the precarious balance of power between the black and whitecommunities in favor of the black community. In this context, it madesense to many whites in Chicago to continue to oppose black mayoralleadership.

As plausible as the information account may be, lack of informationis certainly not the only factor that could have contributed to enduringwhite opposition in Chicago Later in this chapter, I will examine a numberof other factors related to the electoral context that could have influencedthe white vote. Most of these factors cannot easily account for ongoingwhite resistance but it is impossible with just one case to rule out allfactors. Thus, the conclusions of this chapter at best will be tentative.

concerns about black leadership

To see if information – or more specifically a lack of information –could have contributed to ongoing white aversion to black leadershipin Chicago, it is important to establish that whites in Chicago felt manyof the same fears that other whites in other cities felt when faced withthe prospect of black mayoral leadership. A review of the sentimentsexpressed by white residents, the tactics of the candidates, and patternsin the white vote all strongly suggest that whites in Chicago were, in fact,just like whites in other cities. They were uncertain and afraid. Just asin other cities with serious black challengers, the uncertainty that sur-rounded black leadership was acknowledged, explicitly or implicitly, byalmost everyone who participated in the election.

White residents were relatively open about their fears and concerns. Formany white residents, the prospect of black leadership implied nothingshort of disaster. “[It’s] more than an election,” one voter opined. “We’refighting for everything we have this time” (Kleppner 1985). Anothersaid: “The story is going around here ‘Go in your room and lock yourdoor for two days if Washington is elected’”(Peterson 1983b). “If HaroldWashington is elected mayor,” a third city resident predicted, “it will bethe worst disaster in Chicago since the Chicago fire” (quoted in Rivlin1992: 191).

Often, the fear was generalized. If a black man is elected, bad thingswill happen. But frequently, it focused on one terrifying possibility: neigh-borhood integration. As one white resident put it, “I don’t know how tosay this, but most people are afraid he is going to exert all of his powersfor the black community and the white community is going to get nothing.My fear is that he’s going to try to push racial integration, which is fine



as long as I don’t lose money on my house . . . because I can’t take the loss(Coleman 1983a). A Democratic Committee member concurred, explain-ing, “[My constituents] are giving me a message of racial pride . . . They’reafraid of scattered-site housing. They’re concerned about the stability ofour neighborhoods” (in Rivlin 1992: 185–6). “People have lived here alltheir lives,” a resident of one white neighborhood explained. “It’s a nicearea and they want to hold onto what they have” (Morganthau 1983).Jesse Jackson put it more succinctly and perhaps more accurately thananyone else: “Black people were energized. White people were trauma-tized” (quoted in Kleppner 1985: 187).2

As in other cities facing the possibility of black leadership, the whitecandidate attempted to play on these racial concerns. “Epton, before it’stoo late!” became the rallying cry of Washington’s white opponent inthe general election. Mirroring Sam Yorty’s racialized campaigns in LosAngeles, Bernard Epton asked white voters to consider what would hap-pen if a black man were elected to run the city: “Will he obey the law?Will he do what he promises?” (Kleppner 1985: 205). And, as in othercities, the black candidate had to respond. Washington, while primarilyfocused on mobilizing the black community, tried to allay white fearswhenever possible.3 His campaign theme, “A Mayor for All Chicago,”was part of an inclusive campaign that often explicitly told whites thatthey would be included: “Our concern is to heal. Our concern is to bringtogether. . . . I want to reach my hand in friendship to every living soul inthis city.” Washington also took more concrete steps to try to reduce whitefears. Jesse Jackson was “all but banished” during the general election

2 The importance of white fear was highlighted by the the media and other politicalobservers, who generally concluded that the 1983 election was about white racial concernsrather than about political reform, candidate qualifications, or any number of other poten-tially relevant issues. The Washington Post called Chicago a city “engulfed in fear” (1983).A review of public opinion polls taken during the 1983 contest simply concluded that“Washington scared white people” (Rivlin 1992: 173). Another account in the ChicagoTribune compared white fears in Chicago to the fears of white southerners facing the civilrights movement: “It is understandable why some segments of this city fear the kind ofchange the election of Harold Washington as mayor signifies. It was the same fear felt bythe South during the civil rights struggle 20 years ago and in cities all over this country inthe years since” (quoted in Levinson 1983: 213). Another journalist tried to describe whatit was that whites feared: “Simply put, the fear in this and other white ethnic wards of thecity is that Washington’s election would cause a redistribution of power and resources.White neighborhoods would suffer” (Peterson 1983b).

3 Washington’s campaign is best characterized as two campaigns, one focused on blackChicago and the other focused on white Chicago. Each campaign had separate officesand different leadership. In front of white audiences, Washington pressed for racial unity,fiscal conservatism, and reform. In front of black audiences, he preached an “It’s our turn”philosophy.



campaign, and Washington made sure he spent more time in whiteChicago than any of his opponents spent in black Chicago (Rivlin 1992).He even announced the formation of a mostly white transition team inthe last weeks of the campaign to try to prove to white Chicagoans thattheir interests would be considered.

Despite Washington’s efforts, racial fears appeared to dominate thewhite vote.4 The aggregate vote total is the most obvious evidence of thisfear. In the Democratic primary, Washington received only 8 percent of thewhite vote. In the general election only about 20 percent of white voterssupported him. In short, few whites in Chicago seemed willing to votefor a black mayoralty. What makes this white opposition to Washingtonmore telling is that it broke voting patterns that had held for decades. Tovote against Washington in the general election, white Chicagoans had tosupport the Republican nominee – something they had been loathe to dosince the 1930s. In the decades before Washington entered the scene, theRepublican nominee for mayor had never garnered more than 5 percentof the vote. But when Harold Washington ran on the Democratic Partyticket, 79.3 percent of all white Democrats did the unthinkable and votedRepublican (Kleppner 1985). An “unchallenged bastion of Democraticvoting strength” had suddenly become a competitive bipartisan city.5 Andwhites clearly did not flock to Epton because he was a great candidate: hewas a total unknown prior to the campaign, had never won an election,was regularly criticized for being a poor speaker, and was viewed as beingmoody and temperamental, having twice spent time in a mental hospital.By all accounts, if he had not been facing a black candidate seeking tobecome the city’s first black mayor, Epton would have garnered next tono support.6 What seemed to motivate white voters was race. A range ofanalyses of exit polls, precinct returns, and pre-election surveys all foundthat race was more critical than any other issue in the election (Bakerand Kleppner 1986; Day, Andreason, and Becker 1984; Kleppner 1985).7

White fears and racial concern were also reflected in remarkable whitevoter turnout. A record 83 percent of eligible white adults registered for

4 In the end, the only thing that saved Washington was record black turnout (80.1 percentof registered voters) and all but unanimous black support (Lewis, Taylor, and Kleppner1997).

5 Moreover, the 1983 election did not mark a trend to more Republican voting. SinceWashington died, no Republican mayoral candidate has won more than 5 percent of thecitywide vote.

6 Overall, Bernard Epton won 49% of the vote.7 My own analysis of an NBC/Associated Press primary election poll suggested that the

single most important determinant of the white vote was how important whites felt it wasthat Harold Washington was black.



the general election, and of these registered voters a record 80 percentturned out (Lewis, Taylor, and Kleppner 1997). The actions of whiteChicagoans when faced with the prospect of black leadership were notall that different from those of whites in other cities. What set Chicagoapart is what happened after Washington entered office.

what information did washington’s tenure provide?

If whites in Chicago were as concerned about the consequences of blackleadership as were whites elsewhere, why didn’t experience with blackleadership reduce these concerns? The simple answer is a lack of informa-tion. By all accounts, Washington was never given a chance to govern, and,as a result, could not prove that black leadership would not hurt whiteinterests. The efforts of white Chicagoans at various levels inside and out-side of city government successfully blocked almost all of Washington’sagenda.

The most visible and most effective resistance came from white mem-bers of the city council. Even before Washington’s inauguration, his whitefoes on the city council had hatched a plan to usurp power. During thefirst session of council, the anti-Washington coalition changed the elec-toral rules of the council and took charge of all of the city council com-mittees. The infamous council wars were on. Chicagoans quickly grewaccustomed to the rhythm of city politics under this new administration:“Washington or one of his council allies, – the Washington 21 – introducedan ordinance. It failed twenty-nine to twenty-one. The Vrdolyak 29 intro-duced an alternative, which passed twenty-nine to twenty-one. Washing-ton vetoed it, and there the matter remained deadlocked” (Rivlin 1992:233). This pattern continued for almost three and a half years. Over thatperiod, almost every single ordinance that Washington’s administrationintroduced was voted down.

In the first year, a vital downtown development faltered, a proposednew public library failed to move forward, a historic Chicago theaterrejuvenation project could not get off the ground, and a key piece of cityreal estate, the Navy Pier, remained undeveloped. Even O’Hare airportwas threatened with a shut-down in 1984. Washington’s first two budgetswere rejected by the Vrdolyak 29. What’s more, Washington could notget much done with city government, because he was not able to gaininfluence over the bureaucracy. His appointments to various positions incity government were consistently held up by white opposition on the citycouncil. Over eighty key Washington appointments were held hostage.



The appointments languished – two hundred days later, four hundreddays later, six hundred days later (Rivlin 1992: 263). Thus, from day oneof Washington’s term, his administration was essentially cut off at theknees. For every action by the Washington’s administration, there was anequal and opposite reaction. A headline in the weekly magazine Newsdaysaid it all: “Harold Washington: In Charge, But Not In Control” (Miller1989).

The inability of Washington’s black-led coalition to pass its preferredpolicies ultimately meant that black representation provided very littleinformation to white Chicago. Because Washington’s agenda was neverenacted, white residents in Chicago could neither reward him nor pun-ish him for conditions in Chicago, and they could not know what wouldhappen if Washington and his black-led coalition were ever able to gaincontrol of the local political arena. Whites could have inferred somethingfrom what Washington’s coalition wanted to pass. But even here, the mes-sage was mixed, and thus the likely consequences of black control some-what unclear. On the one hand, Washington pursued policies that werenot threatening. He took steps to try to balance the budget and cut the citypayroll. He also talked repeatedly about reform and being fair and open toall parts of Chicago. But on the other hand, Washington took actions thatwhites could easily have perceived as hostile. He tried to push affirmativeaction and the redistribution of funds from downtown to the neighbor-hoods. He also proposed record-breaking tax increases.8 He occasionallymade statements that whites could interpret as a threat to their ongoingwell-being. At one point, for example, he asserted, “Every group, whenit reaches a certain population percentage automatically takes over. Theydon’t apologize. . . . they just move in and take over” (quoted in Graber1984: 72). In short, Washington’s record was too limited, too inconsis-tent, and had too many potentially threatening elements to convince mostwhite voters that they had little to fear from black leadership.

What whites could have easily learned over the course of Washington’stenure was that blacks were getting closer and closer to controlling thelocal political arena. The last six months of Washington’s first term hadalready tilted the precarious balance of control in favor of the AfricanAmerican community. Special city council elections gave pro-Washington

8 Only on taxes was Washington successful. In 1987, he was able to pass major tax hikes. Bycontrast, over the four-year period from 1983 to 1987, redistributive expenditures (socialservices, education, housing, and community development) actually decreased by 0.3%as a percentage of total government expenditures (Bureau of the Census 1964–2003).



forces control of exactly half of the city council seats. With the councilvote divided 25:25 on most issues, Washington could regularly determinethe outcome by casting the deciding vote.9 Moreover, although many ofWashington’s efforts at affirmative action had been stymied, there wasslow growth in the African American presence at all levels of city govern-ment. Under Washington, the proportion of city government workers whowere black rose from 26 to 30 percent, and the proportion of black policymakers increased from 23 to 33 percent. Blacks still did not hold enoughpositions to unilaterally control the operations of city government, butwith some help from liberal whites and other minorities, they were veryclose to attaining a dominant governing coalition. Finally, whites werelosing ground in the electorate as well. In 1980, whites made up overhalf of Chicago’s voting-age population (54 percent), but that numberwas rapidly declining (down to 47 percent in 1987). The pendulum wasswinging, and it was clear that another Washington victory, coupled withelectoral success on the council and other arenas of local politics, couldpush blacks over the top.

ongoing white concerns

Given that Washington’s tenure offered little information about blackleadership to white residents, and given that blacks were that much closerto gaining control of the local political arena, one would expect whiteswho had feared black leadership in the first place to continue to be anx-ious about black representation. This is exactly what a review of eventsin Chicago reveals. An array of evidence indicates that many whites inChicago continued to be concerned about the possibility that blacks wouldtake over.

White concerns were reflected most directly in public opinion pollsthroughout Washington’s tenure. Early in his term, polls showed thatthree-quarters of whites thought Washington was “out to get them”(Rivlin 1992: 243). When asked their opinions in later polls, whiteChicagoans continued to state their fear of Washington and black leader-ship. Washington’s own pollster continued to find that whites perceivedWashington as “hostile and threatening” (Rivlin 1992: 240). Donn Bailey,a black sociology professor at Northwestern University, described thewhite response to Washington’s campaign for reelection: “There’s a deep

9 With that power, Washington’s coalition managed to pass significant legislation, raisingtaxes and expanding tenants’ rights.



fear among the white people. I can understand it. They think we’re goingto treat them the way they’ve treated us” (quoted in Rivlin 1992). Thesefears often spurred whites into action. Groups such as the Save Our Neigh-borhoods, Save Our City coalition, an organization that fought blackencroachment into white neighborhoods, rapidly expanded their mem-berships under Washington.

Not everyone openly expressed these fears, and, by some accounts,white fears had moderated somewhat by the time Washington ran forreelection.10 One local pundit argued that “the city is calmer now, becausewhite Chicagoans have learned that a black mayor is not the end of theworld. Harold Washington has served four years and the Sears tower isstill standing” (Bosc 1987). Several white residents recounted to reportersthe positive lessons they had learned under four years of black leader-ship in Chicago. One retired white security guard, for example, pointedto the lack of racial tension and the provision of city services in whiteneighborhoods: “Actually Washington has performed pretty good. As faras him splitting the city in half, I don’t think so. I don’t see marches,things like that. It’s peaceful in the city. Police and fire protection, garbagepickup – they’re as good as they were before he got elected. Who knows?I may end up voting for [Washington]” (Camper 1987). But in the end, itseemed as if Washington’s tenure was not enough to convince the securityguard and others like him to actually support black leadership. Judgingby the aggregate vote, most white Chicagoans remained wary of blacksand black leadership. In his reelection bid, Washington won few newwhite converts. In fact, after four years of black leadership, white supportmarginally declined. Washington garnered only 14 percent of the whitevote in the primary and a similarly small 15 percent of the white vote inthe general election.

More telling than the aggregate white vote is an account of why indi-vidual white Chicagoans continued to oppose Washington. Unlike in mostother cities with black incumbents, whites in Chicago were often willingto admit that race and racial fears still mattered. Almost three-quarters feltthat race would be a central factor for white voters (Neal 1986). More than40 percent of whites admitted to pollsters that they would personally con-sider race when voting in the upcoming election (Davidson 1987). Evenmore important, unlike the white vote in reelection bids in other cities,

10 White turnout did decline, suggesting that at least some white concerns had diminished.Turnout of registered white voters dropped from a record high of 67% in 1983 to 59%in 1987 (Lewis, Taylor, and Kleppner 1997).



the white vote in Washington’s reelection bid did not seem to be closelytied to Washington’s record. Despite the fact that over half of white voters(55 percent) thought that race relations in the city had actually improvedor were not getting worse under Washington, and the fact that half ofwhite voters believed that their own quality of life had either improved orstayed about the same under black leadership, Washington garnered only15 percent of the white vote. It was also impossible to point to party orpolitical ideology as the reason for the high level of ongoing white opposi-tion to black leadership. Once again in 1987, almost 80 percent of whiteDemocrats voted against their own party to oppose Washington in thegeneral election. Finally, the white vote against Washington in 1987 wasclearly not a vote in favor of a particularly attractive white candidate.Over a third of whites who voted for Washington’s opponent in the gen-eral election admitted that they were voting to “stop another candidatefrom being elected.”

What appeared to matter most was not what had happened over theprevious four years – a period that offered little information to whites – butwhat might happen in the future. The possibility that the city would fallapart if blacks gained control continued to motivate white Chicagoans.One exit poll showed that concerns about the future were so extremethat almost a third of white Chicagoans were “seriously thinking aboutmoving out of Chicago.” A northwest side resident put it in the fol-lowing way: “Our neighborhood is really changing. We wonder whatthe neighborhood will be like” (Belsie 1987). These concerns about thefuture clearly affected the vote. Of those white Chicagoans who saw “badtimes” coming, only 4 percent supported Washington in the general elec-tion. By contrast, 30 percent who saw good times ahead were willingto support Washington. Overall, the vote in Washington’s reelection bidwas more like a black challenger election than a black incumbent election.Party allegiances meant little, candidates meant little, and nonracial issuesplayed a secondary role. Black incumbency had not provided enoughinformation to convince whites that they need not fear another blackvictory.11

The nature of the 1987 campaign also suggested that racial concernswere still prevalent in the white community. Although the candidates’

11 The range of figures for the 1987 election are based on analysis of three citywide polls:an ABC News primary pre-election tracking poll, an NBC News primary exit poll, andan ABC News general election exit poll. Unfortunately, given the limited and incompleteset of questions in each individual survey, no multivariate analysis could be performed.



campaigns that year were, by most accounts, more muted than the heatedand racially explicit campaigns of 1983, there were still signs that bothWashington and his white opponents were acting as if white fears stillmattered. Both of Washington’s main opponents, Jane Byrne in the pri-mary and Ed Vrdolyak in the general election, tried to highlight the direstraits whites would be in if blacks were able to gain control of thecity (Grimshaw 1992). Vrdolyak was the most direct: “If [Washington]is reelected, the sad fact is there won’t be another chance for us. . . . hisdream, our nightmare” (Rivlin 1992: 361). Byrne was more subtle, butthe racial tone of her primary campaign was also evident. White cam-paign workers were also quick to use the ongoing threat of black lead-ership to their advantage. Elmer Filipini, the 30th ward precinct cap-tain, proclaimed, “If Washington wins, in four years they’ll be 100,000

or more whites moving out of the city of Chicago” (Secter 1987). Inresponse, Washington’s campaign tried to address these fears by mutingWashington’s rhetoric. There was no “It’s our turn” statement this time.Washington smiled more, hired more white bodyguards, and avoidedmost racial policy questions. But in the end, his actions did not mat-ter. White Chicago had not changed its mind about black leadership. Thesame racially divided world that Washington had taken charge of in 1983

was still there in the final year of his first term. The campaigns, the natureof the vote, and the fact that Washington got only 15 percent of the whitevote all strongly suggest that white fears remained prevalent. Four yearshad gone by but the theme seemed not to have changed: ‘Who knowswhat will happen if blacks gain control?’

chicago after washington

Although Washington won in 1987, he had little opportunity in his secondterm to demonstrate to white residents what black control of the localpolitical arena would do to the white community. Half a year into hissecond term, he died of a heart attack. The city council then appointedEugene Sawyer, an African American who was part of the old machine,as acting mayor. But Sawyer served as a caretaker for only a little overa year before losing in the primary in 1989 to Richard M. Daley, theson of longtime Chicago Machine boss Richard J. Daley. Black mayoralleadership was over almost before it had really begun – certainly beforeblack leadership had been given a real chance to prove itself.

The result was that the fears and concerns that white Chicagoansexpressed in various ways during the Washington years seemed to persist



table 6.1 White Support for Black Mayoral Candidatesin Chicago

Election/Year Black CandidateWhites VotingBlack (%)

Primary 1983 Harold Washington 8

General 1983 Harold Washington 20

Primary 1987 Harold Washington 14

General 1987 Harold Washington 15

Primary 1989 Eugene Sawyer 8

General 1989 Timothy Evans 6

Primary 1991 Danny Davis 7

General 1991 Eugene Pincham 2

Primary 1995 Joseph Gardner 5

General 1995 Roland Burris 6

Primary 1999 Bobby Rush 4

Sources: Lewis, Taylor, and Kleppner (1997); Alkalimat (1986); Rivlin(1992); and author’s analysis of 1999 Chicago Tribune election poll.

in subsequent years. As illustrated by Table 6.1, over two decades afterthe end of Washington’s tenure, the pattern of extremely racialized votingcontinues.12 Although more recent contests have been void of the explic-itly racialized campaigns that marked the election in 1983, the white votein each subsequent contest suggests that whites in Chicago continue tohave real concerns about black leadership. In every election since 1987,black candidates have lost against a nearly unanimous white bloc vote. Inthe first post-Washington election, Eugene Sawyer, despite his ties to theDemocratic Machine, garnered only 8 percent of the white vote in his pri-mary bid in 1989.13 Subsequent black challengers have fared even worsewith white voters. Despite winning the majority of the black vote, Tim

12 There are certainly exceptions to this pattern at different levels of office. The successfulSenate campaigns of Carol Moseley-Braun and Barak Obama are two of the most promi-nent. However, even in these two cases, it is not clear how supportive white Chicagoanswere of black leadership. Despite almost unanimous black support, Obama actuallylost Cook County in the primary before winning a majority of the white vote in CookCounty against another black candidate in the general election. Braun did win 53% ofthe statewide white vote but she lost much of that white support in her reelection bid(Oden 1996).

13 The 1989 election provided further evidence that white racial concerns about blackleadership, and not the candidates or the campaign, continue to determine the whitevote. The election turned out to be the most racially polarized contest in Chicago historydespite the fact that the campaign was “the least vociferous” in decades and the fact thatSawyer was a longtime machine supporter.



Evans, Danny Davis, Eugene Pincham, Joseph Gardner, Roland Burris,and Bobby Rush all were opposed by more than 90 percent of white vot-ers in their bids for the mayoralty between 1989 and 1999.14 This patternof ongoing white opposition suggests that little has changed in Chicagoand that much of white Chicago stills fears the onset of black control.

alternate explanations for continued white opposition

The information model offers a plausible explanation for why whiteChicagoans continue to oppose black leadership, but it is by no meansthe only factor that could have contributed to ongoing white resistance toblack leadership. There are lots of reasons why white voters might opposeblack candidates and lots of other things that might make Chicago dif-ferent from other cities. In this section, I consider a range of basic factorsrelated to the local political arena during Washington’s tenure that mighthave played an important or even primary role in sustaining white oppo-sition to his candidacy. Logically, if Washington’s tenure coincided with adownturn in the local economy, if Washington or his opponents played therace card more than they had in his first contest, if Washington was ableto raise less money in his reelection bid, if political endorsements favoredhis opponent more in his reelection bid, or if he faced a more qualifiedopponent, then Chicago might be different from other cities, not becauseof the lack of information black leadership provided but instead becauselocal political conditions turned against the black candidate.

However, none of these accounts offers a ready explanation for con-tinued white aversion to black leadership. There was no marked declinein local economic conditions, there was no increase in the racial natureof the campaigns, and Washington enjoyed the usual advantages ofincumbency – money, endorsements, and relatively inexperienced oppo-nents. However, even after going through this process, I cannot definitivelypoint to information as the cause of white actions in Chicago. Althoughthe four factors that I discuss are the main factors usually cited as beingcritical in urban elections, they, by no means, represent an exhaustive set ofpotentially relevant conditions. Other less quantifiable aspects of HaroldWashington the candidate or Chicago the city could have contributed tothe outcomes. Harold Washington was, in many ways, different from the

14 Black voters were nearly united in their support for most of these black candidates. Inall of the elections between 1989 and 1999, black candidates for mayor garnered at leastthree-quarters of the black vote.



typical black candidate. His occasionally overtly racial campaigns and hisvow to reform the machine suggested that more was at stake in Chicagothan other cities.15 The city of Chicago, itself, was, in some respects, alsonot typical. Intense racial segregation and a long history of a powerfuland sometimes corrupt Democratic machine are just two of the featuresthat set Chicago apart. With only one case and only one pattern to beexplained – no decrease in white opposition to black leadership – it isimpossible to rule out all of these potentially important influences. Theavailable evidence may point to information as the main cause of sus-tained white opposition in Chicago but any and all conclusions regardingthe racial learning process in Chicago are necessarily tentative.

Of the many factors that could have limited Washington’s support, adownturn in the local economy is perhaps the most likely suspect. Overand over again, economic conditions have been a central factor governingthe vote in American elections (Fiorina 1981; Erikson 1989). However,economic conditions in the city of Chicago did not deteriorate underblack leadership (Keiser 1997; Fasenfest 1989; Wievel 1989; Fremon1988). Contrary to the fears of many white voters, under Washington percapita income actually increased, and unemployment figures saw marginal

15 Did Washington lose some white support because he continued to press for reform of citygovernment? Probably. In both 1983 and 1987, Washington called repeatedly for an endto patronage, the opening of the local governmental process, and an equitable distributionof city funds. Unlike most previous politicians in Chicago, Washington also refused tocompromise with his machine predecessors once in office. This stance certainly frightenedwhite politicians, who opposed Washington at every turn. And the actions of whitemachine politicians likely helped spur white opposition to Washington. Among otherthings, the actions of white elites certainly helped to highlight the precarious balance ofpower in the local political arena and prevented black leadership from proving itself. Butit is also clear that a lot of white opposition to Washington preceded rather than followedwhite elite actions. As soon as Washington won the primary in 1983 and it became clearthat he had a chance to take over the city, much of white Chicago mobilized into action.As Kleppner and others have noted, “It was a spontaneous and enthusiastic outpouringfrom the grass roots, a groundswell. At that point, most of the white committeemenwere probably still stunned by Washington’s nomination and . . . took the election ofany Democratic nominee for granted” (Kleppner 1985: 191). Moreover, in 1987, whiteChicagoans continued to oppose Washington even though white machine politicianswere fighting each other to see who would challenge Washington. Despite the fact thatthe machine could not produce one “great white hope,” white voters still chose to voteagainst Harold Washington in 1987. By almost all accounts, white fears had little to dowith reform issues either. As the New York Times put it, “Say what they will, Democratsdefecting in such numbers in Chicago are not just concerned for the probity of theDemocratic machine or candidates. Many white Chicagoans simply fear . . . the idea ofa black mayor” (1983a). In short, much of the sustained white opposition would likelyhave been there with or without the issue of reform.



improvement.16 Equally important, there was no marked change in therelative economic status of the black and white communities. Blacks didget a few more jobs, more appointments, and more contracts from citygovernment, but the change was far from dramatic and did not greatlyaffect the welfare of most of the black or white communities (Joyce 1994;Fremon 1988). The major problems facing poor, black Chicago were asbad in 1987 as they had been in 1983.17 In short, there was little inChicago’s economy under black leadership that should have generated theextraordinary white opposition Washington faced in his bid for reelection.

The lack of change in the white vote also cannot be attributed to theincreased racialization of either Washington’s or his opponents’ cam-paigns. In 1987, both Washington and his opponents toned down theracial rhetoric in their campaigns. Washington was by no means a color-blind politician in 1987, but most agreed that his second campaign wasmuted compared to his first (Rivlin 1992; Holli and Green 1989; Miller1989). Washington’s campaign manager, Jackie Grimshaw, described itthis way: “Our approach this time is more intellectual than emotional”(quoted in Rivlin 1992: 366). There was no Task Force for Black Politi-cal Empowerment, no talk about taking over, and Washington “generallysteered clear of any mention of race” (Rivlin 1992: 366). After a passiveperformance in a debate with Vrdolyak, Washington complained, “Myown campaign did something to me that Vrdolyak could never do. Theycut my balls off” (quoted in Miller 1989: 303). Instead of focusing onrace, Washington campaigned largely on his record, highlighting his fiscalresponsibility while continuing to talk about neighborhoods and reform.Nor did Washington’s opponents play the race card in 1987 to the sameextent they had in 1983. Racial slurs largely dropped out of the campaign(Holli and Green 1989). Several ostensibly nonracial issues actually gotsome air time (Grimshaw 1992; Fremon 1988; Davidson 1987). Byrne,the primary challenger, talked a lot about crime. Washington’s generalelection foes also spent time and resources addressing the issues of taxesand Chicago’s poor schools. Race and white fears may have still been oneveryone’s mind, but, with a couple of notable exceptions, these racialconcerns were not the topic of conversation. Whites who voted against

16 Between 1983 and 1987, per capita income grew 5.7% (Bureau of the Census, 1964–2003). Immediately prior to Washington’s arrival, 11.7% of Chicago was unemployed.Just before his first reelection bid, unemployment stood at 9.3% (Bureau of the Census).

17 In 1987, poverty stood at over 20%, and one in five Chicagoans had no health insurance(Fremon 1988; Rivlin 1992). The Chicago Housing Authority was still in crisis, andChicago’s public school system was viewed as one of the worst in the nation.



Washington in 1987 did not do so, then, because they had been exposedto an exceptionally racialized campaign.

Washington’s inability to attract more white voters when he ran as anincumbent cannot be explained away by pointing to a lack of incumbentresources. In 1987, he was able to greatly outspend his opponents. In thegeneral election, Washington raised $6.3 million, over twice as much ashis closest competitor, Ed Vrdolyak, who raised $2.3 million. In 1987,Washington also managed to get all but a few of the city’s major endorse-ments, including firm support from the city’s two major newspapers. Hewas officially endorsed by the Cook County Democratic Party. And, forthe first time, in 1987 many prominent local white Democrats actuallycampaigned at his side, while other influential Democrats chose to sit onthe sidelines rather than actively campaign for Washington’s opponent,as they had done in 1983. There was no clear trend in candidate qualityand overall little link between the white vote and candidate quality acrossWashington’s four primary and general elections. Whether Washingtonfaced the incumbent mayor, the assumed heir to the Daley machine, arelatively unknown and inexperienced candidate, an ex-mayor trying tomake a comeback, or three white opponents (the most successful of whombegan with negative poll ratings unmatched in city history), his white sup-port remained more or less constant (Holli and Green 1989).18 It appearedthat “anybody but Harold” was the choice of almost 90 percent of whiteChicago.

All told, Washington was a powerful incumbent who under normalcircumstances would have substantially increased his share of the whitevote. But in 1987, blacks were on the verge of real power, and nothingabout Washington’s track record, his opponents, or his campaigns haddemonstrated to white voters that their fears were unwarranted. Afterfour years of stalemate, fears of what would happen if blacks gainedcontrol of Chicago politics appeared to be a critical force behind whiteaversion to Washington and black leadership.

18 The fact that Washington could garner no more than 15% of the white vote in thegeneral election in 1987 despite facing three white opponents whose campaigns werelargely aimed at ousting each other and who, with the exception of Vrdolyak, whose“disapproval” rating stood at 64%, had little name recognition and limited politicalexperience was perhaps the strongest sign that candidate quality was largely irrelevantin these contests (Holli and Green 1989). As confusing and as unappealing as the whitecandidates were, their shortcomings did not prevent white voters from uniting to serveone electoral goal: the defeat of Harold Washington.



Ultimately we cannot know for certain that a lack of information aboutblack leadership played the central role in sustaining white opposition toblack candidates in the city. There are just too many potentially relevantfactors and not enough data points to rule them all out. However, if thereis a lesson from Chicago, it seems to point to the importance of informa-tion. Without credible information about how black leadership affects thewhite community, little change seems to occur in the arena of local racialpolitics. If black leadership is prevented from enacting its agenda, whitesget less information. As a result, fears about black leadership and highlyracialized voting patterns are likely to persist. Ironically, white racial fearsprevent white residents from learning that their fears are largely unwar-ranted since the closer blacks get to gaining control and being able toprove themselves to the white community, the more motivated whitesare to prevent that takeover. This conclusion does not bode well for thefuture of race relations in Chicago. Today, whites represent only 42 per-cent of the city’s population, and the balance of power between whitesand blacks remains precarious.19 Whites are very unlikely to want to cedecontrol at any point in the near future, and thus one could predict thatthe black-white divide in Chicago will endure.

The future in other racially balanced cities seems less clear. The datathat I have presented in this book are not particularly encouraging. Acrossall of the racially balanced cities that I examined in Chapter 4, white sup-port for black candidates actually declined when those candidates ran forthe first time as incumbents. And even today, mayoral politics in citiessuch as Philadelphia and New York can hardly be viewed as racially har-monious. However, some racially balanced cities have shown signs ofimproved race relations. In Houston, for example, the last two mayoralelections have ended with multiracial coalitions supporting the winner.In other racially balanced cities, black mayors have been given more of achance to enact their agendas. Black mayors in Dallas and Hartford, forexample, were able to put forward programs without incurring massivewhite counter-mobilization. Whites may thus be getting important infor-mation from black leadership in these cities. In addition, immigration isaltering the basic racial dynamics of mayoral politics in many raciallybalanced cities. The growth of the Latino and Asian American popula-tions in cities like San Francisco and Houston has certainly complicated

19 In large part, whites have been able to retain control by garnering support from thegrowing Latino population.



the electoral equation, as both black- and white-led coalitions vie for thesupport of these other minority groups. Thus, the future of race relationsin these cities depends upon a range of factors as diverse as racial learningand immigration and there is at least some chance that white aversion tominority leadership will diminish.


7

Other Cases Where Information Could Matter

This book is ostensibly about race – about how black mayors affect theviews and votes of their white constituents. But the story presented in thepreceding chapters is also very much about information and how credi-ble information can fundamentally alter individual views and intergroupdynamics. In this chapter, I consider the implications of information forother types of political transitions. I begin this task by reviewing howand why information matters in the interactions between black mayorsand their white constituents. I then assess a variety of other cases to see ifthey could plausibly fit an information-based account of behavior. In eachcase, I ask two questions. Is the case structured in a way that suggests thatinformation should matter? Does the evidence point to learning? The goalin each case is not to demonstrate or prove learning. In fact, the evidencethat I put forward in each case will be extremely limited. I merely wishto point to cases where the presence of learning is plausible enough towarrant further investigation.

According to the information model, the key to learning is that expe-rience with new representation provides credible information. In orderto provide this, new leaders must be perceived to have real control overoutcomes and policies. The more that new leaders have the power toinfluence the well-being of one community, the more credible is the infor-mation the members of that community get from their experience withthe new leaders, and the more likely they are to learn. Power and credibleinformation are not, however, the only conditions necessary for learn-ing to occur. In addition, for credible information to lead to a changein views and votes, residents must have exaggerated expectation. Theymust have unrealistic concerns that stem from a lack of information and

141



the use of inaccurate stereotypes. For new leaders to reduce these fearsand stereotypes, moreover, they must not use their new power to harmanother group.1 It is the decision not to enact harmful policies that is bothsurprising and informative.

To explore whether the information model can be applied morebroadly, I examine three additional cases below: whites’ reactions to blackmembers of Congress, African Americans’ reactions to black mayors, andwhites’ reactions to Latino and Asian American elected officials. I alsovery briefly consider whether the information model might be appliedto a range of nonracial political transitions both inside and outside theU.S. context. Each case fits the information model to a greater or lesserextent.

black incumbents in congress

If information really does structure white reactions to black leadership,it should not only explain variation in white responses across cities butalso account for different white reactions across different types of politicaloffices. The more that a particular political office can control local policiesand affect local conditions, the more white residents should learn fromthat position, and the more positively they should respond to the presenceof a black incumbent in that office.

Incumbents in Congress have a lot of power – often more than may-ors, whose powers are limited by city charters – but there are two keydifferences that make it easier to connect black mayors than it is to con-nect black members of Congress to local conditions. First, incumbents inCongress do not have the power to act unilaterally. Unlike a mayor, legisla-tors must obtain the support of a majority of their colleagues to enact poli-cies. Second, since members of Congress are in Washington and often dealwith national issues, they are less frequently blamed or credited for out-comes at the local level. Mayors, by contrast, are viewed as being primarily

1 Another important assumption behind the information model is that residents can and doacquire information about the impact of the new leadership. Given the relatively low levelsof political knowledge evident in the mass public (Campbell et al. 1960; Delli Carpini andKeeter 1996), there is some doubt as to whether most individuals are likely to acquireinformation about new leadership. However, as I noted in Chapter 1, residents do notneed a lot of information to learn from new leadership. They need only know that newleadership exists and that their own well-being – or the well-being of their community –has not changed under these new leaders. If the conditions of the information model aremet and residents do have real concerns about new leadership, then there is reason tobelieve that most residents will have the motivation to acquire this limited information.


Other Cases Where Information Could Matter 143

responsible for local policy and local economic conditions. Moreover,although Congress can appropriate considerable funds for local projects,their actions are less likely to have a direct, visible effect on local con-ditions. From education to police protection to garbage collection, theimplementation of most local policies occurs under the control of localgovernment. All of this means that it is harder to tie a local outcome to theactions and interests of an individual legislator.2 If any politician is to beblamed or credited, it will probably be the mayor. Since it is easier to trackthe effects of black mayors than it is to track the effects of black membersof Congress, black mayoralties should provide more credible informationto white residents than do black Congress members. As a result, we shouldexpect fewer positive changes in white behavior under incumbent blackmembers of Congress than under incumbent black mayors.

In undertaking this comparison, I cannot provide the same analysis ofCongress members as I did for mayors. The main problem is that mostblack members of Congress win in majority black districts and many, ifnot most, face only black challengers. With few biracial elections andfew cases with large white voting populations, it is difficult to undertakerigorous empirical analysis of the white vote in all but a few elections. I willsimply review the relevant results from a number of existing studies thathave examined white voting patterns in black incumbent congressionalelections and present my own data on incumbent reelection rates.

To begin to see if black incumbency at the congressional level affectwhite votes, I collected data on the outcome of every black incumbentreelection bid in Congress in the twentieth century. As with black mayors,the first point to note about black incumbents in Congress is that they winalmost all of the time. In the last century, African American members ofCongress won reelection an impressive 97 percent of the time (302 out of312 cases). This rate of success puts black incumbents in Congress roughlyon a par with white House members, who generally win reelection over90 percent of the time (Stanley and Niemi 1992).

What is more important for our purposes is how black incumbentsdo when facing white voters. Here, the results are also fairly clear. Inthe thirty-three cases where a black incumbent went up for reelectionin a majority white district, the reelection rate was an equally impressive

2 Another important factor limiting the information provided by black legislators is thatthey are invariably in the minority in the legislature. In the House, black members hold lessthan 10% of the seats. No state has close to a majority of black legislators. Thus, whethera policy passes or not is usually not dependent on the preferences of black legislators.



94 percent. These reelection rates cannot tell us if black candidates garnermore white support as incumbents, but they do at least tell us that thereis no widespread white backlash.

Importantly, the success of black incumbents stands in stark contrast tothe failure of black challengers. Although there is no complete record ofhow many African American candidates have run for Congress, it is clearthat few have been successful in districts where white voters controlled theoutcome. Of the 6,667 House elections in white majority districts between1966 and 1996, only 35, or 0.52 percent, were won by blacks (Canon1999). And even when blacks won, it appears that most white votersopposed them. In the bulk of studies that have assessed white support forsuccessful black challengers, the results suggest that only about a third ofwhite voters ultimately voted for the black challenger (Bullock and Dunn1997; Voss and Lublin 2001).3 In other words, white voters appear tobe resistant to the prospect of black leadership at the congressional level,and many try hard to prevent blacks from winning office. Once a blackrepresentative or senator is in office, however, this resistance seems tofade. Even in cases where white voters could oust black incumbents inCongress, they almost never choose to do so.

A set of five reelection bids deserves special attention here. In the early1990s, the Supreme Court struck down the districts of five black Housemembers and effectively forced then to run for reelection in newly redrawndistricts that no longer had black voting majorities. Most civil rightsactivists and many academics felt the Supreme Court decisions wouldspell doom for black representation in Congress (Reeves 1997). Laugh-lin McDonald, the director of the southern regional office of the Amer-ican Civil Liberties Union, predicted “a bleaching of Congress” (Sack1996). The Reverend Jesse Jackson called the Supreme Court’s move “akind of ethnic cleansing” (Sack 1996).4 But to almost everyone’s sur-prise, the 1996 congressional elections told a very different story. In thatyear, all five black members of Congress who ran for reelection in newly

3 In addition, there are often signs that racial prejudice is a determining factor in the whitevote in these contests. For example, the white vote in Edward Brooke’s attempt to becomethe first popularly elected African American senator was closely correlated with indicesof prejudice (Becker and Heaton 1967).

4 Within the black community, anger at the court’s actions was pronounced. An editorialwritten by one of the black incumbents stated: “Five Supreme Court Justices have done to[blacks] in Louisiana what no hooded Ku Klux Klan mobs were able to do in this decade –remove a [black] from Congress. The federal district court created a district where DavidDuke, a former Klan leader, will have a far better chance of election than Cleo Fields [theblack incumbent]” (Fields and Higginbotham 1996).



redrawn minority black districts won their races – and with substan-tial white support. In perhaps the two most surprising cases, CynthiaMcKinney won the 11th District in Georgia with the support of an esti-mated 31 percent of white voters, and Sandford Bishop carried approx-imately 36 percent of the white vote to victory in Georgia’s 2nd District(Bullock and Dunn 1997). Equally important, but perhaps less surpris-ing, none of these five black incumbents lost an election in the ensuingyears. Given that before 1996 less than 1 percent of previous elections inthe nation’s majority white congressional districts had produced a blackvictor, this string of African American victories is quite striking (Canon1999). It suggests that incumbency is a powerful tool for black candidatesat the congressional level. As Cynthia McKinney put it, “My victory saysmore about the power of incumbency than anything else” (quoted in Bul-lock and Dunn 1999: 15). As challengers, black candidates almost neverwin when they face white voters. As incumbents, they almost always win.

The key test of the information model is not simply whether blackincumbents win or whether they win with white support but rather ifthey win with more white support than they had as challengers. Althoughdata that allow an assessment of this change in the white vote are limited,one study has attempted to measure change in white support during andafter the transition from white to black leadership. Bullock and Dunn(1999) examine changes in white support between challenger and incum-bent elections for a handful of black candidates who ran in the South inthe 1990s. The results varied from candidate to candidate, and some ofthe black incumbents in their sample did lose white support over time.However, when all of their cases were looked at together, white supportdid increase. On average, black candidates garnered about 3 percentagepoints more white support when they ran as incumbents in 1996 thenwhen they ran as challengers in 1992. This is certainly not an overwhelm-ing shift in the white vote, but it may be enough to suggest that somelearning was occurring.

Another way to assess the importance of information and racial learn-ing is to see if racial considerations prevent at least some white vot-ers from supporting black incumbents. In other words, is the level ofwhite support for black incumbents less than it would be for similarlysituated white incumbents? Here, the results are quite mixed. In per-haps the most expansive study of black incumbent congressional reelec-tion bids, Highton (2004) used exit poll data to find that, after cam-paign spending, partisanship, the presidential vote, and demographicshad been controlled for, white voters were not less willing to support



black incumbents than white incumbents.5 By contrast, Gay (1999) andVoss and Lublin (2001) employed ecological inference across a smallernumber of southern House elections to find that whites were, on aver-age, 8 to 10 percent less likely to support black incumbents than whiteincumbents. If Highton’s exit poll reports can be believed, it appearsthat whites’ racial concerns largely disappear by the time black mem-bers of Congress run for reelection. If estimated election returns moreaccurately reflect the white vote, however, there is evidence that whenblacks run as incumbents, these fears, although not overwhelming, are stillpresent.

If the information model works at the congressional level, white votersshould be more and more willing to support black congressional candi-dates as more blacks gain office around the country. Here, the data aremuch more limited but nevertheless suggestive. In the last four decades,there has been a slow but steady increase in the number of black mem-bers of Congress who represent majority white districts. The number grewfrom zero in 1960 to one in 1970, two in 1980, four in 1990, and six in2000. Although the number of blacks representing white districts is stillvery small, the six blacks who come from majority white districts repre-sent a significant percentage of all black members of Congress: in 2000,16 percent of all black members of Congress represented districts wherewhites were the majority of voters. Many factors likely contributed to thisexpansion, but the increased willingness of white voters to support blackchallengers for Congress certainly seems to have helped to push blackscloser to parity in the House.

Much more research needs to be done, but overall, the evidence seemsto suggest that incumbency at the congressional level has a real but limitedeffect on white voters. Incumbency would appear to lead to modest gainsin white support for black candidates and may be leading to a diminishedrole for race in the voting booth. The modest changes that we see underblack incumbents in Congress fit well with an information model of whitebehavior. Given that blacks in Congress exercise little direct control overlocal policy or local conditions and given that it is difficult to gauge theimpact of black leadership at the congressional level, one would expectexperience under a black incumbent to influence only a small number ofwhites.

5 Highton (2004) examines about 18,000 white votes in 357 contested House elections (37

with black incumbents) in 1996 and 1998.



african americans and black elected officials

Another interesting potential application of the information model is thecase of African American voters. In the accounts of mayoral politics thatI have presented in this book, I have not given a great deal of attention toblack voters. But clearly, in these cities and elections, black voters playeda critical role. Without their support, few black challengers would everhave won office. Obviously, the fate of black incumbents is intricatelytied to the decisions made by black voters. Do they learn from their expe-rience with black mayoral leadership as well? Just as white residents,prior to the election of black mayors, black residents had not seen blackleaders in positions of real authority over the white community. Indeed,much of the available evidence suggests that many members of the blackcommunity had very high expectations of black political leadership. Oneaccount notes that “everyone was optimistic life was going to get bet-ter” (Donze 1998). Another refers to “an almost revolutionary rise inexpectations” (Span 1983: 55). Despite the fact that black residents likelyhad more informed and more nuanced views of the black communitythan did whites, there appears to have been considerable room for learn-ing among African Americans.6 Equally importantly, African Americanresidents lived through the same events and witnessed roughly the sameinformation. Thus, there is at least some reason to suspect that informa-tion should matter for African Americans as well.

A brief review of elections in the cities highlighted in this book sug-gests that experience with black leadership did in fact change AfricanAmericans’ views and political behavior. In the same way that experi-ence under black mayors taught white voters that they have little to fear,experience under black leaders seems to have taught African Americansthat they could not expect black leaders to be able to redress deep-seatedracial inequalities. The early euphoria surrounding black electoral victo-ries seems in many cases to have been replaced by more reasoned assess-ments of black leadership. As one black resident of New York put it, “It’sbecome clear that [Dinkins] has not produced dramatic changes and prob-ably won’t” (Hicks 1993). Others were even more direct. In Los Angeles,a black voter complained: “To put it bluntly, [Bradley] just hasn’t done a

6 Surprisingly, it is not clear whether African Americans always hold different views ofthe black community from whites. Surveys of white and black Americans reveal thatAfrican Americans tend to hold similar stereotypes about the black community and blackcandidates (Schuman et al. 1997; Williams 1990).



hell of a lot for black folk” (Litwin 1981: 88).7 A retiree in Gary expresseda similar view: “It’s been 28 years of black mayors and I don’t see whatthey have done” (Kendall 1995). Though this evidence is anecdotal, itsuggests that time under black incumbents has taught some African Amer-icans that black political representation cannot easily or quickly solve theblack community’s basic economic problems.8

A drop in turnout is perhaps another sign of black learning and dimin-ished expectations regarding black leadership. Intense mobilization andrecord black turnout in black challenger elections slowly gave way toaverage or even record low turnout in black incumbent elections. As onereporter in Newark put it: “They danced in the streets in 1970. Theywalked to the polls in 1974, and they crawled to the polls in 1978”(Oreskes 1981: 29). Across the twenty-six cities examined earlier, blackturnout fell from an average of 66 percent in black challenger campaignsto 59 percent when the same candidates first ran for reelection a few yearslater. In many subsequent elections, black turnout dropped even further.In Detroit, for example, black turnout slowly declined during ColemanYoung’s tenure to the point where just under a third of registered blackvoters were going to the polls in his later bids for reelection (Rich 1987).And in a range of cities from Los Angeles to New Orleans to Memphis,successive elections with black incumbents similarly saw lower and lowerfigures for black participation (Jackson and Preston 1994; Wright 2000).Although a number of factors likely contributed to declining black partic-ipation, frustration with the pace of change under black incumbents mayvery well have played an important role. As one account put it, “the real-ity of governance generated less enthusiasm than its prospect” (Peterson1994: 2).

Even more telling, perhaps, is the increasing willingness of some blackvoters to favor white candidates over black candidates.9 While the trend

7 At times, this frustration has been extreme. One black councilwoman in Cleveland wasparticularly negative: “The mayor doesn’t represent the black community. The mayor isbought and sold by the power structure in this city” (Milbank 1993: A1).

8 Despite what appears to be widespread frustration about the pace of change, AfricanAmericans still seem to garner psychic benefits from black representation. Tate (2003)and Bobo and Gilliam (1990) have both shown that black leadership leads to increasedtrust and efficacy among African Americans.

9 This trend was not apparent in the first few years of black leadership. Across the 26 citiesexamined earlier, black voters were just as supportive of black mayoral incumbents (95%of blacks supported them on average) when they ran for reelection for the first time asthey were of the same candidates when they ran as challengers (93% of blacks supportedthem on average).



is by no means universal, a number of largely black cities that had long-term black leadership have begun to return whites to the mayor’s office.In 1995, for example, Gary, a city whose population is nearly 90 percentblack, elected a white man, Scott King, to the mayoralty. King captured83 percent of the citywide vote in the general election, and in subsequentelectoral bids he handily won reelection. Similarly, in 1998, after twenty-one years of black mayoral leadership, Jerry Brown took over as mayor ofOakland, a city that is only 24 percent white. Baltimore, another majorityblack city, also opted to elect a white candidate over a black candidatein 1999 following over a decade of black mayoral leadership: MartinO’Malley garnered one in three black votes on his way to victory overtwo black candidates (Shields and Penn 1999). All told, almost half of thelarge majority black cities have replaced long-serving black mayors withwhite mayors.

And there are other signs of growing division in the black vote, perhapsindications of growing frustration in the black community. In many cities,what were once united black voting blocs have grown more divided. Theintra-group divide in cities such as Philadelphia and Memphis has oftencentered on class lines (Adams 1994; Keiser 1997). In other cities, a rangeof issues seems to have reduced black unity (Pohlman and Kirby 1996;Wildstrom 1998). But in most cases, these divisions appear to have begunwith concerns over the ineffectual nature of black leadership.

Combined, these patterns in the black vote suggest that race, or at leastthe race of candidates for political office, has lost some of its significance incertain urban arenas. According to many political observers, rather thanfocus on race, African Americans have begun to focus more on local eco-nomic conditions and the quality of basic public services. David Bositis, aresearcher at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, has con-cluded that “Black voters have become more interested in getting resultsthan anything else” (Minzesheimer 1995). Newspaper reports focusingon elections in largely black cities have also tended to conclude that raceis becoming less important: “Blacks in cities across America have reacheda frustration level and are looking for politicians that can change theirliving conditions, regardless of color” (Ethnic News Watch 1995).

This sentiment has been echoed by at least some black voters. One blackvoter in Gary expressed it this way: “My trash isn’t collected and there’sbeen a giant pothole outside my door for two years. Do you think I careabout the color of the mayor’s skin?” (Tyson 1995). Another remarked:“It’s not a white world. It’s not a black world. If you poke Scott King [thewhite candidate], he’ll bleed the same color I do” (Minzesheimer 1995).



Finally, a Black Panther in Cleveland admitted, “We can’t vote based onskin color, but based on what’s in our self-interest” (Gaither 1998).

Learning in both the white and black communities has arguably led toelections in which race is peripheral – or at least more peripheral than itonce was. An account of recent mayoral politics in Cleveland, for example,concluded that “while race remains a factor . . . voters nevertheless appearmore willing to elect candidates of another race than at any time in the last30 years” (Vickers 1997). A report from a 1995 election in Gary found that“the city’s voters have mostly disregarded race in this campaign” (Tyson1995). And in Baltimore, high crossover voting among both whites andblacks has led many to maintain that race is losing its significance in urbanpolitics (Samuel 1999; Texeira 1999). Cleveland’s City Council presidentdescribed the trend as well as anyone else: “There are layers of issues inany election, and while race is still an issue, it’s not the definitive issue”(Vickers 1997).

Certainly, there are many cities and elections where candidates’ racecontinues to play a critical role and where African Americans continueto expect great change from black elected officials. But in other placesaround the country, there appears to have been a real change in the blackcommunity and in black political behavior. In these cities, blacks havebegun to realize that black leadership in and of itself cannot solve Amer-ica’s racial problems. The letdown was probably inevitable. Many AfricanAmericans had expectations that could never be fulfilled by black incum-bents. This is, in essence, white racial learning in reverse. Experience underblack leaders provided information that forced African Americans to rec-ognize the limitations of black leadership. Although whites and AfricanAmericans differ in many ways, they both appear to be open to at leastsome change.

latino and asian american leaders

Another important case to consider in the context of American racialpolitics is learning under Latino and Asian American incumbents. Demo-graphic changes over recent decades have increasingly placed Latinos andAsian Americans at the forefront of American politics: the number ofLatinos in office has more than doubled in the last two decades, so thattoday there are over 4,500 Latino elected officials nationwide, Latinosoccupy twenty-four seats in Congress, and one state has a Latino governor(NALEO 2005). Asian American representation is also growing rapidly,though from a much smaller population base. As one recent article put it,



“Asian American representation in the hallways of power has gone frombarely noticeable to modestly influential” (Ratnesar 1998).10 Between1996 and 2000 alone, the number of Asian Americans holding officeincreased by 10 percent nationwide (APALC 2001). In short, the growingpresence of these two groups is hard to ignore.

Should we expect the arrival of these new minority leaders to markthe beginning of another learning process for white Americans? In manyways, the context surrounding the arrival of Asian American and Latinoleaders mirrors the context surrounding the first African American electedofficials. Most white Americans have had relatively limited contact withmembers of either group, and few have witnessed either Asian Americansor Latinos in positions of authority over the white community. There isalso evidence of fairly widespread and fairly negative stereotyping of bothgroups. Whites are, for example, quite likely to believe that Latinos areunintelligent, welfare prone, hard to get along with, and violent (Boboand Johnson 2000). Asian Americans, by contrast, tend to be viewed asforeign and mysterious (Kim 1999; Lee 2000).11 Whites are also as likelyto admit feeling threatened by Latinos and Asian Americans as by AfricanAmericans (Bobo and Johnson 2000). In particular, in places where eithergroup comprises a rapidly expanding or relatively large portion of thepopulation, whites have singled them out and acted as if they posed areal threat (Hero 1998; Alvarez and Butterfield 2000; Hajnal, Gerber,and Louch 2002). This suggests that many whites may have exaggeratedperceptions about what might happen under Latino or Asian Americanleadership.

Anecdotal evidence points in this same direction. In response to minor-ity challenges, some white campaigns have warned of “an impending[Latino] takeover” and, at least according to political observers, somecontests have “centered on the possibility of [Latino] political dominance”(Rosales 2000: 94; Stuart 1983b). In other cases, the white community hasmobilized to try to prevent Latino or Asian American victory. In San Anto-nio, for example, a Latino bid to gain control of the city council led to twoyears of what has been described as “ethnic turmoil” (Stevens 1981). Andin Miami, when Cuban control of the County Commission became a pos-sibility, other groups rallied in a series of highly charged elections to try to

10 Today there are over 600 Asian Americans at the federal, state, or local level, includingtwo senators and four members of the House of Representatives (APALC 2005).

11 Of all minority groups, it is Asian Americans with whom whites feel they have least incommon (Lee 2000).



prevent a Cuban takeover (Stuart 1983a). Another sign that whites havereal concerns about Latino and Asian American leadership is the fact thatLatino and Asian American campaigns often try to address those fears bydownplaying their race and ethnicity in a similar fashion to some AfricanAmerican candidates. A range of successful Latino and Asian Americancandidates have made claims similar to those of Jay C. Kim, who declaredto white voters: “I don’t have a special agenda for Asian Americans. Theyshould not expect anything special from me” (Mydans 1993). Accordingto many observers, Henry Cisneros “assiduously tried to build bridges”in his effort to become the first Latino mayor of San Antonio (Stevens1981). During his campaign for mayor in Denver, Cisneros often stated,“the issue was not to elect a Hispanic candidate but to elect a candi-date with a vision, with ideas for the city” (Schmidt 1983). Accounts ofMichael Woo’s bid for the mayoralty in Los Angeles also suggested thathe took pains not to identify too closely with Asian Americans or theirpolitical interests (Clifford 1993). In order to win white votes, these newminority candidates have, in the views of some, “become in effect ethnicneutral” politicians (Mydans 1993).

And, as is the case with black leadership, the tenures of Latino andAsian American leaders seem to have provided the white community withpositive or anti-stereotypical information. Since Latinos and Asian Amer-icans have entered office only recently in most cases, we do not haveextensive information regarding the substantive impact of either Latinoor Asian American representation. But what we do have suggests thatLatino and Asian American elected officials effect little change in the rel-ative fortunes of whites and non-whites and at best deliver small gains tosome segments of the minority community. Fairly broad studies of Latinorepresentation in Congress and of Latino mayors and council members, inparticular, have revealed “few major departures from existing policy.”12

12 The quote is from Hero (1992: 152). Hero and Tolbert (1995) have found that the pol-icy choices of Latinos in Congress were no different from those of whites of the sameparty who represented similar districts. Similarly, Kerr and Mladenka (1994) could findno real change in minority employment patterns under Latino mayors and council mem-bers. Mladenka (1989) did, however, show some marginal changes in Latino employmentin places with greater Latino representation on the city council. More detailed analysisof individual cases suggests that Latino leaders, just like their African American coun-terparts, have often tried to enact policies that appease local businesses and middle-classinterests (Munoz and Henry 1997). Accounts of Henry Cisneros’s mayoralty are typ-ical. Observers in San Antonio claimed that “Cisneros promoted neither his MexicanAmerican identity nor the specific interests of that community. He acted as a mayor whohappened to be Mexican American” (Munoz 1994: 112). One of the toughest criticsreferred to Latino representation in San Antonio as the “illusion of inclusion” (Rosales2000).



No systematic assessment of the policy effects of Asian American electedofficials has been undertaken, but anecdotal evidence from a number ofAsian American officeholders reveals little in the way of dramatic change.Thus, there are reasons to expect that learning will occur under Latinoand Asian American incumbents.

At the same time, there are important differences between the blackcontext and the Asian American and Latino contexts that should alter theinformation equation somewhat. Specifically, at least two factors makeLatino and Asian American leadership less threatening than black lead-ership. First, Asian Americans and Latinos generally run for office afterwhites have experienced black leadership or at least have heard aboutblack incumbents elsewhere in the country. The learning that has occurredunder black leaders should help to reduce fears about Latino and AsianAmerican challengers. Second, the policy divide between white Ameri-cans and the Latino and Asian American populations is not nearly assharp as the divide between white and black America (Kinder and Sander1996; Uhlaner 2000; Hajnal and Baldassare 2001; Hochschild and Rogers1999). The threat from Asian Americans could be particularly small forat least three other reasons. The Asian American population is itself moredivided on most policy questions than either the Latino or African Amer-ican communities (Tam 1995; Garcia 1997; Warren, Corbett, and Stack1997; Hero 1998; Espiritu 1992). Asian Americans also have a socio-economic status more similar to that of whites than have the other twominority groups. And finally, whites tend to hold some distinctively pos-itive views of Asian Americans – namely, that they are intelligent, hard-working, and high achieving (Bobo and Johnson 2000; Lee 2000). Thus,while I would expect the information model to apply to white Americansexperiencing Latino and Asian American leadership, I would also expectlearning and changes in white political behavior to be more muted.

Has experience with Latino and Asian American incumbents changedwhite perceptions and white political behavior? Is there any evidence oflearning under Latino and Asian American incumbents? The answer toboth of these questions is a provisional yes. Although Latino and AsianAmerican officeholding is very much a work in progress and the dataare limited, at first glance there does appear to be a pattern of changingwhite behavior in response to experience with Latino elected officials. Theevidence is clearer for whites who experience Latino leadership than it isfor whites who live under Asian American incumbents but in both casesthere are signs that white Americans are learning.

To mirror as best as possible the tests for change under AfricanAmerican leadership, I assembled data on white voting patterns in Latino



challenger and Latino incumbent mayoral elections.13 Just as I did withAfrican Americans, I focused on the first Latino to win the mayoraltyin major American cities. As before, I compared white support for theLatino challenger to white support for the same Latino running for thefirst time as an incumbent. The number of cases here is small. There areonly four major cities that have elected Latinos who have then gone onto run for reelection (Miami, San Antonio, Denver, and San Jose). Theresults, however, are fairly clear. In three out of the four cases, whenthe same candidate ran for reelection, white support increased apprecia-bly. The seven-point gain in white support (from 52 to 59 percent) thatoccurred in San Jose was typical.14 Only Federico Pena in Denver facedas much white opposition when he ran as an incumbent as he did whenhe ran as a challenger. And even here, analysis of the white vote suggeststhat the role of race diminished in Pena’s reelection bid; according to Hero(1992), party and ideology played a more central role in that election. TheLatino incumbents’ success has not been confined to first reelection bids:the four incumbents have won reelection in 13 out of 14 attempts; the lossoccurred in Miami, where Maurice Ferre lost not to a white challengerbut to another Latino, Xavier Suarez. We can also see evidence of declin-ing turnout in these elections. San Antonio experienced one of the most

13 Estimates of the white vote come from newspaper accounts and published case studiesof these elections and are based on either exit polls or ward- or precinct-level analysis(New York Times 1973; Munoz 1994; Hero and Beatty 1989; Gerston 1998; Scheibal2003).

14 Interestingly, if the white vote in these cases is at all representative, it appears that whitevoters are much more willing to support Latino mayoral challengers than they wereto support black mayoral challengers. The 52% average white support for Latino chal-lengers stands in fairly sharp contrast to the comparable figure for black challengers: 30%white support. Asian American challengers, by almost all accounts, have been even moresuccessful at garnering white support. One study of California, for example, concludedthat Asian Americans “have been the most successful of minority candidates in winningwhite votes” (Ratnesar 1998). The fact that the majority of Asian American elected offi-cials outside of Hawaii have won office in places where white voters predominate atteststo the ability of Asian American candidates to obtain fairly broad white support. In Cal-ifornia, the state with the largest Asian American population, Cain and Kiewiet foundthat 73% of Asian American elected officials represented areas that were less than 10%Asian American (1986). Gary Locke’s successful bid to become the mainland’s first AsianAmerican governor in a state that was only 5% Asian American, and Norman Mineta’svictory in a congressional district that was only 2.5% Asian American are just two of themore famous examples. The fact that party identification and political ideology matteredas much or more than race/ethnicity in many of these challenger contests lends furthersupport to the notion that whites were less threatened by Latino and Asian Americancandidates (Hero 1992). It may be that race and ethnicity are less of a hurdle for Latinoand Asian Americans than they are for African American challengers facing white voters.



severe drops when turnout fell to 17 percent in 1983. But almost acrossthe board, interest in mayoral elections has declined as residents gainedmore experience with Latino mayors (New York Times 1983b; Kaufman1998).

It is difficult to tell whether these trends are spreading to other cities.More Latino candidates seem to be winning office in minority Latinoplaces. Recent victories by Gus Garcia in Austin, Eddie Perez in Hartford,and Judith Valles in San Bernardino – all minority Latino cities – aresuggestive of a trend. Antonio Villaraigosa’s victory in racially diverseLos Angeles could represent another important turning point.15 Thereis also some indication that over time whites are increasingly willing tosupport Hispanic candidates. Studies of certain states have found that “thenumber of crossovers is increasing” (Suro 1991). Although some highlyracialized elections continue to occur, the overall pattern may point toa lessening of white racial concerns and declining white opposition toLatino candidates.16

The data on Asian American incumbents are more limited. In largepart, this is because of the small number of cases of Asian Americanleadership in major office. Asian Americans have, for example, won themayoralty of only two cities with populations of over 200,000, and esti-mates suggest that not much more than a handful of Asian Americanshave been directly elected to mayoral offices around the country (APALC2003). Nevertheless, it is clear that Asian American incumbents who winoffice in primarily white areas tend to do extremely well when they runfor reelection. Analyzing available data on Asian American candidates, Ifound that across the country, 98 percent of Asian American incumbentswho ran for reelection at the city council level or higher between 2000 and2003 won their reelection bids.17 And at least at the congressional level,growing victory margins imply that over time Asian American incum-bents are winning with an increasing greater amount of white support.18

15 As of 2005, there are 21 Latinos who serve as mayors of cities with a population over100,000 (NALEO 2005).

16 One of the most prominent recent cases of polarized voting was in San Antonio, whereMaria Berriozabal lost a mayoral bid with 95% of the Mexican vote and only 20% ofthe white vote (Munoz 1994).

17 These results are derived from election results reported by the Asian Pacific AmericanInstitute for Congressional Studies. The data set is far from complete (especially for officesbelow the level of the state legislature), but it does show that of 60 Asian Americanincumbents who sought reelection over this time period, 59 were successful.

18 With few exceptions, congressional election returns since the 1990s indicate that AsianAmerican candidates have generally garnered more and more support as their time in



Moreover, few of these reelection bids appear to stimulate much in theway of a debate over race. Gary Locke, for example, “cruised to a secondterm” as governor of Washington state in a campaign that featured littleattention to race. In a pattern similar to black incumbents, Locke simplyran on his record (Pierce 2000). Finally, although Asian Americans havealmost always had to win over non-Asian American voters in order to getelected, the number of Asian Americans who are able to do so success-fully is clearly growing over time. Much of the growth in Asian Americanrepresentation can be directly attributed to the growing Asian Americanpopulation, but white voters also appear to be playing an increasinglyimportant role.

None of these trends provides direct evidence of white learning underAsian American or Latino incumbents. But the available evidence is bothinteresting and suggestive. The patterns that we see in the vote and in thenature of Latino and Asian American incumbent campaigns hint at grow-ing white acceptance of Latino and Asian American leadership. Clearly,a plausible reading of the data is that white Americans are learning fromtheir experiences under Latino and Asian American incumbents. If true,this suggests that the information model can be applied across a fairly widerange of cases. It also suggests that Latino and Asian American leadershipmay be another important learning tool that could lead to positive changein inter-group dynamics.

transitions around the world

The patterns that we see across all of these different cases raise questionsabout the applicability of the information model to a wider range ofpolitical contexts around the world. The transition to democracy andmajority black rule in South Africa, for example, seems to fit many ofthe criteria of the model. White fears were widespread in South Africabefore the election of the African National Congress, and the transitionto black control did not lead to a wholesale redistribution of resourcesor the downfall of the white community. Thus, the possibility of whitelearning in South Africa certainly exists.19

office increased. Since most of the Asian American incumbents are running in primarilywhite districts, this rules out a white backlash explanation and implies that whites arebecoming more supportive over time.

19 Although there is little evidence of a dramatic shift in white attitudes in response to blackleadership in South Africa, the results of the most recent national elections in 2004 didseem to demonstrate a slight reduction in racial divisions (Ferree 2005).



There may be other contexts beyond the arena of race and ethnicity,moreover, where the information model is applicable. There is nothing inthe information model itself that requires a racial divide or racial stereo-types. All that is required is a lack of information about one particulargroup and fear about what that group will do once in power. Thus, theinformation model can be seen as a model for understanding transitions ofpower from once-dominant groups to underrepresented minority groups.One could apply such a model to the cases of religion or gender. Did theelection of John F. Kennedy as the first Catholic president lead to a changein attitudes toward Catholic candidates? Certainly, one could make a rea-sonable claim that America’s experience under Kennedy reduced the sig-nificance voters accorded to the Catholicism of candidates. The concernsabout a Catholic president that were expressed when Kennedy ran foroffice seem not to have played an obvious role in subsequent electionsinvolving Catholic candidates around the country.

Whether gender transitions provide the same information and havethe same effect on attitudes and voting behavior is less clear. Interactionsbetween men and women are generally much more extensive than inter-actions between different religious or racial groups. As a result, lack ofinformation may not be as great a problem when female candidates runfor office for the first time. Although existing studies do suggest that menhold stereotypes about female candidates, researchers have found thatthese stereotypes are not universally negative. Moreover, it is not clearthat stereotypes and expectations surrounding female candidates alwaysreduce the level of support that female candidates receive (Huddy andTerkildsen 1993; McDermott 1997). My suspicion is that learning, to theextent it occurs under women in office, is so muted that it would be diffi-cult to register using the blunt measures available to researchers. On theother hand, it is not inconceivable that there was at least a slight adjust-ment to gender stereotypes in the wake of Margaret Thatcher’s strong-willed leadership as the first female prime minister of England. Thus, inexceptional cases, electing women to office might spark real change.

In many of the cases that I have highlighted, and in a range of otherpolitical transitions around the world, the main barrier to one groupceding power to another group is thought to be historical enmities andirreconcilable differences over race, religion, or ideology. But these sameconflicts can just as easily be viewed as being driven by uncertainty and alack of information. This may give us a very different perspective on polit-ical transitions. For groups losing power, it may not be ideological divides,racial hatreds, or religious antagonisms that really drive their actions and



ultimately lead to mobilization and violence. Instead, from the perspec-tive of the information model, the root of the problem may be a lack ofinformation. Perhaps it is impossible to provide information to reassureformerly dominant groups. Indeed, transitions, when allowed, sometimeshave the very consequences that members of formerly dominant groupsfear. But when both groups have essentially the same interests – the main-tenance of the economic health of the larger community and the continuedvitality of the country or region – there may be room for information toplay a role. In these cases, if the right information can be provided, itmay help to overcome fears driven by religious, ideological, or racial dif-ferences. At the very least, it seems worthwhile to ask deeper questionsabout the role of information and of uncertainty in conflicts around theworld.

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Conclusion

A Tale of Caution and Hope

For years, African Americans fought for access to the vote and the abilityto choose their own leaders. When that opportunity finally arrived, manyin the African American community were justifiably jubilant. Over theensuing years, black elected officials have tried to live up to the hopesand expectations of the black community. In many cases, they havetried valiantly to improve conditions in the black community, and fre-quently their efforts have been rewarded. According to a range of studies,black representation has made a difference. Nevertheless, to many if notmost observers of American politics, the victory seems somewhat hol-low, as black elected officials simply have not been able to alleviate basicproblems facing the African American community. Poverty, poor edu-cational achievement, crime, racial segregation, and other fundamentalracial inequalities remain largely unchanged despite years and in somecases decades of black leadership. In light of the ongoing problems plagu-ing the African American community, some critics now claim that blackleadership is “largely irrelevant.”1

One of the goals of this book has been to show that this view representsonly part of the story of black representation. Existing studies have failedto uncover one of the most important consequences of black representa-tion because they have largely focused on the effects of black leadership onthe black community. By examining the effects of black leadership on the

1 The quote is from a book entitled We Have No Leaders in which Robert Smith lambaststhe conservative policies of African American leadership. Other critics, such as AdolphReed, have argued that black leadership often “doesn’t really amount to a transition tolocal black rule” (1989: 44).

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white community, I have shown that black officeholding has an importantimpact on the attitudes and actions of white Americans. The tests that Ihave discussed here reveal change on a number of fronts. Under blackmayors, there is a measurable shift in white voting patterns and in theracial sentiments expressed by a portion of the white population. Blackrepresentation appears to diminish the role of race in the vote, to boostwhite support for black candidates, relax racial tension, and foster morepositive white attitudes toward both black leadership and the black com-munity. All of this could have long-term consequences for race relationsin this country. If black representation continues to expand and whiteAmericans continue to grow more sympathetic to the plight of the blackcommunity as a result, it may be possible in the future to enact large-scalereforms that reduce basic racial inequalities. Contrary to what many haveargued, then, black representation does matter.

This book is not simply a story about black representation. It is also astory about white Americans. What white Americans do or do not do inresponse to black empowerment tells us a lot about how race works in theminds of white Americans. The pattern of white behavior detailed in thisbook leads to two critical conclusions about the white community. First,it is clear that race still matters in the American political arena. The fearthat whites express, the intense mobilization of the white vote, and thealmost overwhelming opposition that most black challengers face fromwhite voters all express whites’ strong aversion to black challengers andsuggest that many white Americans continue to be quite threatened bythe prospects of black empowerment.2 This fear has declined over time,but even today, under a range of circumstances, racial threat and racialcompetition continue to shape white political behavior. Moreover, judgingby the negative attitudes of some whites toward the black community andthe imperviousness of those attitudes to change, there is also evidence thatat least a segment of the white community remains prejudiced. It is notclear that anything will change that.

But the second and far more important insight about white Americansthat emerges from this book is that for many others change is possible.The alteration of the white vote under black incumbents and the shiftingviews of many white residents under black mayors strongly suggest that

2 The pattern of reactions across different contexts reinforces this point. The fact thatwhite opposition to black challengers varies systematically with the size of the local blackpopulation and is greater in areas with a larger black population also suggests that raceis critically important for many white Americans.



some whites can learn from their experiences. All white Americans are notequally open to the information that they get from black Americans andsome resist change altogether, but some do change. Many white Americansare not blind and resolute on matters of race. The critical point is thatpositive change can and does occur.

This point is well worth highlighting. In the past, black gains haveusually been met with white resistance, which has often led to a reversalof many of those gains (Klinkner and Smith 1999). The successful effortof white Southerners to eliminate or reduce African American politicalrights in the aftermath of the Civil War is one of the sharpest examples ofthis pattern. The often violent efforts of white Americans to try to reversethe gains of the Civil Rights Movement merely repeated this pattern.Even today, increases in black power tend to spawn white mobilization.Given the apparent reluctance of many white Americans to cede powerand resources to the black community and the willingness of the whitecommunity to occasionally engage in violent actions to try to undo blackgains, it is vitally important that we identify and draw attention to con-texts where members of the white community respond more positively toblack empowerment. My work suggests that there is at least one contextwhere black gains are often followed by more, rather than less, whitesupport. Black representation certainly cannot solve all or even most ofAmerica’s racial ills, but if it can begin to reduce racial divisions in thepolitical arena, then it is a goal well worth pursuing.

The positive changes that we see under black incumbents inevitablyraise a question. Why is black representation different from other formsof interracial contact? In this book, I have argued that it provides informa-tion about blacks and their interests that white voters perceive as credible.Black leadership provides this type of information where other types ofinteractions do not because black electoral victory represents one of thefirst times that African Americans have the power to affect the well-beingof the white community. Black co-workers can seem reassuring, blackneighbors can display counter-stereotypical behavior, and black politicalcandidates vying for office can promise not to enact a pro-black agenda,but the words and actions of members of the black community are gen-erally not accepted by whites as informative. Black leaders, on the otherhand, because they have power, are perceived as different from othermembers of the black community, and their incumbency therefore pro-vides information that is much harder for whites to dismiss. The fact thatblack leaders can inflict real harm on the white community makes blackelectoral victory especially threatening but also especially informative. As



a result, black leadership represents one of the few contacts between thetwo races that has positive consequences.

The positive change under black representation also provides an impor-tant lesson for how we should study race and interracial dynamics. Muchof the mainstream literature on race is locked in an overly simplisticdebate. On one side, scholars argue that there has been little, if any,change on matters of race. According to these authors, America is essen-tially still a racist society, and this fact permeates almost all aspects ofthe political arena. Pettigrew epitomizes this view when he argues, “Racein America still serves as a political lightning rod that attracts politicalenergy whether the candidates intend it or not” (1988: 32). Some are evenwilling to argue that “race will always be at the center of the Americanexperience” (Omi and Winant 1994: 5). On the other side of the debateare those who believe that the importance of race in the political arenahas greatly diminished. As Thernstrom notes, “White voters may rejecta black candidate for precisely the same reasons that whites may reject awhite. . . . On merits or inadequate electoral appeal” (1987: 216). Some goso far as to claim that racism is largely a phenomenon of the past (D’Souza1995; Highton 2004). “Being Afro-American,” one writer concludes, “isno longer a significant obstacle to participation in the public life of thenation” (Patterson 1997).

As I have said, however, to portray white Americans as simply “racist”or always “race-blind” overlooks the variable nature of race in America.This book shows that the key question is not if race is central in thepolitical arena but rather when it is central. In order to understand howrace works in American politics, we have to try to determine when racistvoting is more likely to emerge, when color-blind politics are most oftenprevalent, and ultimately why these differences occur. In short, we needto understand how context changes the meaning of race.3

Finally, the positive change that occurs under black mayors highlightsthe potential for politics to play a central role in the lives of Americans.There is a widely held perception among scholars of American politicsthat the political arena is peripheral to the lives of Americans. And in

3 Although some researchers have made this point in the past, most studies of racial politicspay it little heed. Huckfeldt and Kohfeld have argued, for example, that “racial conflict isfundamentally a group phenomenon, subject to environment and structural properties thatare variable through time. Thus, the pattern and consequence of racial conflict in electoralpolitics must be understood in terms of particular groups at particular times in particularplaces” (1989: 44). Cohen and Dawson (1993), Hero (1998), and Bledsoe et al. (1995)have also in different ways demonstrated the importance of context in understandingracial politics.



many ways surveys back up this perception. Few Americans are activelyinvolved in the political arena and most profess to little interest in politicalaffairs (Verba, Schlozman, and Brady 1995). Moreover, most Americansappear to be unaware of either who their elected leaders are or whatthey are doing in office (Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996; Campbell et al.1960; Althaus 2003). But the ability of black mayoral leadership not onlyto change white voting behavior but also to alter white racial attitudestestifies to the significance of politics. Positive change in the arena ofracial politics is hard to come by. The fact that the election of one blackcandidate to office appears to improve white attitudes toward the AfricanAmerican community suggests not only that white Americans do pay closeattention to the political arena under certain circumstances but also thatattention to politics can, over the long term, affect inter-group dynamicsin important ways.

The main contribution of this book is to show how information gar-nered from black representation alters the attitudes and actions of whiteAmericans. Knowing that this change occurs is important. What is per-haps just as or even more important is being able to use this new knowl-edge to improve race relations in America and elsewhere. Fortunately, anumber of policy lessons flow directly from the research in this book.The first and most obvious recommendation is to increase the numberof black elected officials. Expanded minority representation is unlikely toresolve all of our racial struggles, but if it can foster even slightly betterunderstanding among groups, it is a goal well worth pursuing.

But how do we improve the chances of African Americans gainingoffice? Since blacks already hold office in most of the majority blacklocalities around the country and the creation of more such districts seemsunlikely, the real question is how we can get more white voters to supportblack challengers. Information might help: if white Americans tend tooppose black challengers because they have little information about thelikely consequences of black leadership and fear a reversal of the racial sta-tus quo, the key to changing the white vote may be to provide informationabout the real consequences of black representation – in essence, to showthat black leadership poses little threat to white well-being. The easiestway to do this is to make information about past cases of black leader-ship available to whites who have not seen black leadership in action.If we can show white voters in Boston, for example, that black con-trol in Atlanta, Los Angeles, and other cities has created economic pros-perity rather than economic decline, it may be possible to reduce whitefears and change white votes. Media campaigns could be an importanttool.



Candidates themselves could also offer what are essentially short his-tory lessons. Those who are moderates may do well to provide informa-tion about their own histories. On this point, the case of Los Angeles isparticularly interesting. Tom Bradley lost his first mayoral bid when SamYorty raised white fears by talking about the police force quitting, blacksmoving in, and a host of other terrible things that might happen if a blackman were elected. Bradley won his next mayoral bid and overcame atleast some of these white fears by repeatedly highlighting the details ofhis record on race-relevant issues. By continuously mentioning his fiscallyconservative and racially evenhanded record on the city council and not-ing his stellar career as a member of the city’s police department, Bradleyseems to have won over a sizeable portion of the white electorate in LosAngeles. Other black challengers with equally reassuring records in loweroffices might do well to highlight their own achievements. These kinds ofstatements are unlikely to be as credible or convincing as actually livingunder black leadership, but they could help. There are already signs thatwhites who have never lived directly under black leadership are learn-ing simply by witnessing black leadership from afar.4 The more concreteinformation we can provide about black leadership and its consequences,the less likely whites will be to fear a black takeover, and the more likelyit is that black representation will expand around the country.

This book offers other possible prescriptions for black candidates seek-ing office. Past research has provided mixed advice for those black con-tenders who seek to expand their white support. Some scholars havemaintained that black candidates can garner white support by deracial-izing their campaigns, but other studies have found that even when theyattempt to do so they are faced with widespread white resistance (Perry1991; Nichols 1990; C. Hamilton 1977; Wright 1996; Starks 1991).Unfortunately, few of these studies have controlled for other aspects ofthe campaign, and none has assessed outcomes in more than a handfulof elections. As a result, it has been hard to tell if deracialization reallyworks. The results in Chapter 2 indicate that deracialization is in factan effective strategy for garnering white support. When black candidatesmove from a racially explicit campaign to a less racially focused campaign,they are able to attract much greater white support. In particular, blackchallengers who advocate fewer race-specific policies, who avoid raciallyinflammatory comments, and who take care to address white audiences as

4 The growing willingness of white Americans to vote for black challengers over time sug-gests that whites in areas without black leadership may be changing their views.



often or more often than they address black audiences tend to win morewhite support. Of course, there are dangers associated with this strategy.Promises of racial evenhandedness could lead to fewer pro-black policychanges. And it is possible that deracialized campaigns could negativelyeffect black turnout and black support.5 In short, black candidates mayhave to walk a fine line between trying to garner white support and tryingto serve the black community.

We may also be able to expand black representation by keeping blackincumbents in office longer. Black incumbents may have a tool – albeita difficult one – to help them stay in office. Knowing that the vote oflarge segments of the white community is dependent on an incumbent’srecord in office gives black incumbents a strong incentive to work towardpolicies that expand the economy, reduce crime, and generally improveconditions in the city. Especially, in cities where whites make up a largeshare of the voting population, black mayors should now know that ifthey can improve local conditions, they have an excellent chance of win-ning reelection. Of course, figuring out how to maintain a robust localeconomy and improving one’s overall policy record is no easy task forblack incumbents, who often serve in economically depressed areas.

Finally, the results of my research suggest that we should begin to recon-sider how we draw political boundaries. Many scholars and activists havechampioned the creation of racially mixed districts both because blackcandidates have a good chance of winning office in these districts andbecause racially mixed districts may maximize black substantive represen-tation (Grofman and Handley 1989; Lublin 1997; Cameron, Epstein, andHalloran 1996). The pattern of responses to black mayoral candidatesoutlined in this book suggests, however, that racial balance may createproblems of its own for black candidates. At least at the mayoral level,the limited information provided by black incumbency and the ongoingfear that blacks will take control of the local political arena means thatwhites tend to remain particularly fearful and highly mobilized in raciallybalanced localities. Thus, the creation of more racially balanced districtscould actually lead to an increase in racial tension and racial conflict. Inaddition, as a consequence of this ongoing racial conflict, black incum-bents also have a more difficult time getting reelected in these places.Further investigation beyond the mayoralty is certainly necessary before

5 It is, however, worth noting that for the black challengers examined in this book, blacksupport was almost universally high and black turnout almost always extraordinary –regardless of the campaign platform.



any concrete recommendation is made, but my results suggest that actorswho are interested in redistricting should begin to include two new cri-teria that they have previously ignored: reelection rates and the level ofracial conflict associated with different racial demographics. If results atthe mayoral level are repeated for other offices, both of these criteria mayforce us to reconsider the creation of more racially balanced districts.

the future of race relations in america

The overarching message of this book is one of caution and hope. Weshould not overestimate the effect of black representation. Informationmatters, but there are real limits to its effects in the racial arena. Theinformation that black representation provides can reduce racial conflictwithin the confines of mayoral politics, but it does little to reduce conflictin other arenas. Despite years of black mayoral leadership, whites andblacks in many of the cities examined in this book continue to clash overissues such as police procedures, public school policy, affirmative action,and development priorities. Moreover, full-scale violence has occurredwith or without the presence of minority leadership. In cases where theinterests of the black and white communities truly are in opposition, theremay be little that black representation can do to ensure that the two groupsdo not collide. It is also apparent from the pattern of change under blackleadership that not everyone learns from their experiences with blackincumbents. White Republicans, in particular, are generally less affectedby the presence of black leaders than are white Democrats. Similarly, it isapparent that even in black incumbent elections race is still important. AsChapter 2 demonstrated, when white voters face black incumbents, thesize of the black population and the racialization of the black candidate’scampaign strongly shape the white vote. And in the end, despite learn-ing, white support for black leadership is far from unanimous. It is rarefor more than a slim majority of white voters to support black leaders.In part because of this uneven learning and the ongoing effects of race,African Americans are still greatly underrepresented nationwide. Despitereal progress, black representation is not a cure for all of America’s racialdilemmas.

In this discouraging context, it helps to remember that change can anddoes occur. Each new black leader provides additional information tothe white community – information that tends to reduce white fears andracial tension. Everyone does not learn, and differences of opinion over



policy may remain intact, but racial divides are often diminished underblack leadership. Black representation represents a small step, perhaps,but it could be an important one. Over time, changes effected by blackleaders should filter into other arenas of racial politics. The future of racerelations in America may depend in no small part on the presence andexpansion of African American political representation.


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STATISTICAL APPENDIXES

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a

Appendix to Chapter 2

black challenger/black incumbent data set

Selection of Cases

I singled out the first black mayor of every city with a population over100,000 by searching the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studiesdata set,in which there is a database of all black officials in the countryelected over the past three decades. I then used newspaper reports andother secondary accounts to single out those cities with biracial (black-white) electoral contests in the general or run-off election for both theelection in which the black candidate won to become the first black mayorof the city and the election immediately following in which the blackcandidate ran as an incumbent for the first time.

Variables

White VoteThe dependent variable in each election is the percentage of white vot-ers who supported the black candidate. Estimates of the white votecome from a number of different sources. For Chicago, Dallas, Hous-ton, Los Angeles, and New York, the vote by race and ethnicity wastaken directly from exit polls. If more than one exit poll was available fora given election, an average of all of the exit polls was used. In severalother cities (Birmingham, Cleveland, Flint, Gary, Memphis, Newark, NewOrleans, and Philadelphia), I used estimates from existing studies that had

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172 A: Appendix to Chapter 2

estimated the vote by race using regression analysis at the precinct or wardlevel. In one city, San Francisco, estimates of racial voting preferences camefrom ecological inference. The ecological inference procedure is describedby King (1997). If exit polls were unavailable and data were insuffi-cient to perform ecological inference (Atlantic City, Baltimore, Durham,Hartford, Kansas City, Oakland, New Haven, Minneapolis, Rockford,and Seattle), I used estimates derived from homogenous precinct analy-sis – more specifically, the complementary percentages method outlinedby Loewen and Grofman (1989: 602–3). This method involves a two-stage process. First, I arrived at a preliminary estimate of the vote byrace by using the vote in all of the precincts that are predominantly ofone race. In the second stage, I estimated the total vote of the nonpre-dominant groups for each candidate in each of the key precincts usingthese preliminary estimates. I then subtracted out the votes of the non-predominant groups in each precinct, and the remainder of the vote ineach set of key precincts was used to arrive at a final estimate of thevote of the predominant group. Whenever possible, I obtained multipleestimates of white voting behavior for the same election. Most estimatesvary by only a few percentage points. In each city, the data for the twoelections were compiled in the same manner (that is, I used exit pollsconducted by the same firm or analyzed the same precincts). Data onthe black vote was compiled in the same manner using the same datasources.

Racial Demographics (Percentage Black, Change in White Population)Data on the racial makeup of each city come from the relevant censuspublications (Bureau of the Census 2002, 1994, 1990, 1978). When notpublished by the census, data for intercensal years were interpolated.

Racial Focus of the CampaignTo code black campaigns, I focused on three factors: the policy platform,the presence or absence of racial rhetoric, and the extent to which the can-didate disproportionately addressed black audiences. I divided campaignsinto three categories: campaigns that had any sort of explicit, pro-blackfocus, campaigns that addressed the black community implicitly througha generally pro-black policy agenda or by actively mobilizing black votersand speaking before black audiences, and campaigns that never mentionedblack interests and were fairly race neutral. Coding was based primarily



on local newspaper accounts of the campaign, although secondary sourceswere also consulted in a number of cases.

Candidate QualityCandidate quality is a measure of the political experience of the whiteopponent in each election. In line with Krasno and Green (1988) andother past research, candidate quality was measured on the followingfour-point scale: (4) candidates with current or past citywide or statewidepositions; (3) candidates who had been city council members or state rep-resentatives; (2) candidates who had served in other local elected offices;(1) candidates who had served in local appointed offices or were other-wise well-known figures; and (0) candidates with no elected experience.Also, since others have argued for a simpler measure (Krebs 1998), inalternate tests I included a dummy variable that simply indicated whetheror not a candidate had previously held an elected office. Finally, to gaugethe overall impact of incumbency, I included a dummy variable measuringwhether or not the white opponent in the black challenger election wasthe incumbent mayor.

Campaign SpendingTo assess the role of campaign spending, I collected data on the totalgeneral election campaign spending of both the black candidate and themajor white candidate in each election. I also created a measure of thecampaign spending advantage/deficit of the black candidate over the whitecandidate. In alternate models, each of these three measures as well aslogged versions of the three measures was tested. Unfortunately, spendingdata are available for only about two-thirds of the cases, and this measurewas not included in the final model. Spending data are taken either directlyfrom the local election board or from election board figures cited in localnewspapers.

Endorsements (Democratic Party, Local Newspaper)For each election, I noted whether or not the local Democratic Partyendorsed the black candidate and whether or not the major local dailynewspaper endorsed the black candidate in each contest. Half of the citiesare nonpartisan, but in 25 of 26 cases the black candidate was mostlyclosely aligned with the Democratic Party or with Democratic voters.The support or opposition of the Democratic Party was almost alwaysseen as an important factor in the progress of the election campaign.



If there was no formal endorsement by the Democratic Party, I deter-mined whether there was active opposition, mixed support, or active sup-port of the black candidate from leaders of and workers for the localDemocratic Party. Both variables are dummy variables coded (0) endorseopponent, (0.5) no endorsement/mixed support, and (1) endorse blackcandidate.

Change in Per Capita IncomeThe basic measure is change in per capita income in the metropolitanarea relative to the median change for the entire metropolitan USA. Thevariable measures how well a metropolitan area has done economicallyrelative to the rest of the country.I used change in per capita income with-out controlling for national trends. This latter measure was less stronglyrelated to white voter behavior.

Redistributive SpendingThis variable assesses the degree to which each local government shiftsspending away from developmental spending (highways, airports, andstreets) and onto redistributional functions (social services, housing, andeducation) over the course of the black incumbent’s first term. It is mea-sured as a percent of total government expenditures. Data on local gov-ernment spending are from the annual local government finances reportof the census.

Voter TurnoutThe basic measure of turnout is the percentage of registered voterswho voted in a given election. I use overall turnout rather than whiteturnout because turnout by race is not available for all of the cities. Fig-ures for voter turnout come primarily from the Race and Urban Poli-tics dataset (see Lublin and Tate 1995). In other cases, registration andturnout data were gathered from the local registrar or local newspa-per reports. Supplementary data on turnout by race/ethnicity were gath-ered largely from secondary accounts and newspaper reports. Aggregatewhite, black, and overall turnout are extremely highly correlated in theseelections (r > 0.9).

SourcesUnless otherwise indicated, most of the data points for most of the mea-sures were obtained from local newspaper accounts of the campaignsin each city. Missing data were filled in using secondary accounts by



table a.1 A List of Black Challenger/Incumbent Elections

City Candidate Year 1

WhitesVotingBlack (%) Year 2

WhitesVotingBlack (%)

Atlantic City James Usry 1984 15 1986 11

Baltimore Kurt Schmoke 1987 42 1991 35

Birmingham Richard Arrington 1979 19 1983 20

Charlotte Harvey Gantt 1983 36 1985 46

Chicago Harold Washington 1983 20 1987 15

Cleveland Carl Stokes 1967 19 1969 23

Dallas Ron Kirk 1995 42 1999 60

Durham Chester Jenkins 1989 31 1991 21

Flint James Sharp 1983 18 1987 10

Gary Richard Hatcher 1967 15 1971 22

Hartford Thirman Milner 1981 37 1983 –Houston Lee Brown 1997 26 1999 49

Kansas City Emanuel Cleaver 1991 38 1995 46

Los Angeles Tom Bradley 1973 44 1977 53

Memphis Willie Herenton 1991 3 1995 39

Minneapolis Sharon Belton 1993 46 1997 47

New Haven John Daniels 1989 52 1991 36

New Orleans Ernest Morial 1978 20 1982 15

New York David Dinkins 1989 28 1993 22

Newark Kenneth Gibson 1970 10 1974 23

Oakland Lionel Wilson 1977 23 1981 62

Philadelphia Wilson Goode 1983 23 1987 20

Rockford Charles Box 1989 59 1993 66

San Francisco Willie Brown 1995 50 1999 48

Seattle Norm Rice 1989 54 1993 63

Trenton Douglas Palmer 1990 12 1994 48

academic scholars or by directly contacting city, county, and state offices(primarily local elections boards).

mayoral incumbent elections data set

This data set includes the outcome of every reelection bid for every blackmayor in cities with over 50,000 residents. Black incumbents were iden-tified through the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, whichhas maintained a database of all black elected officials in the country forthe past three decades. In addition, data on the race of the opponentsand the racial demographics of the city were obtained from the Mayoral



table a.2 Descriptive Statistics for Black Challenger/BlackIncumbent Elections

Variable Mean Std. Dev. Min. Max.

Percent White Vote for Black Challenger 29.7 15.6 2.6 58.6Percent White Vote for Black Incumbent 35.8 17.7 10.4 66.5Change in White Vote for Black Candidate 6.4 14.7 −16 39

Newspaper Endorsement 1 0.65 0.44 0 1

Newspaper Endorsement 2 0.92 0.18 0.5 1

Party Endorsement 1 0.73 0.41 0 1

Party Endorsement 2 0.85 0.27 0 1

Percent Black 36.2 15.2 6 58

Change in Redistributive Spending 0.88 3.5 −4.6 9.4Incumbent 1 0.27 0.45 0 1

Quality White Opponent 1 2.5 1.4 0 4

Quality Black Challenger 2.4 1.2 0 4

Quality White Opponent 2 2.5 1.6 0 4

Racial Focus of Black CandidatesCampaign 1

0.30 0.32 0 1

Racial Focus of Black CandidatesCampaign 2

0.17 0.28 0 1

Percent Turnout 1 55.2 15.9 20 82

Percent Turnout 2 48.2 18.8 5 75.5Change in White Population −1.9 1.9 −6 3

Change in Per Capita Income 1.6 5,2 −7 20

Careers Dataset for the period 1970–1985. For a description of the dataset, see Wolman, Strate, and Melchior (1996) and Wolman, Page, andReavely (1990). For more recent elections, data on opponents and elec-tion results come primarily from local newspaper reports and in somecases from secondary accounts of the elections.

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b


In order to perform the two-stage least-squares analysis, I first devised atreatment or first-stage equation modeling the presence of a black mayorin the city. The first stage included five exogenous variables that served asinstrumental variables (per capita black income in the city, the percentageof black adults with a college degree in the city, the percentage of thecity that voted Republican in the 1988 presidential election, the medianincome in the city in 1989, and the percentage of adults in the city with acollege degree in 1990). These instrumental variables fit the criteria pro-posed by Bartels (1991): First, according to Karnig and Welch (1980),they are among the strongest predictors of black mayoral presence (asidefrom the proportion of a city’s population that is black, which is clearlyrelated to white attitudes). In the present data set, they explain an addi-tional 4% of the variation in the first stage. Second, they are, at least toa certain extent, exogenous. None of the instrumental variables is highlycorrelated with individual white racial attitudes in the survey (r < 0.15),and omitted variable Hausman tests suggest that the instrumental vari-ables are, with one exception, not significantly related to white racial atti-tudes in the second-stage equation. It is also important to note that thereis little theoretical reason to expect that the five instrumental variableshave a direct impact on white racial attitudes. Given that I control forincome, education, partisanship, and political ideology at the individuallevel, it seems unlikely that citywide measures of income, education, andpartisanship would have any additional effect on white racial attitudes.The results of the overall two-stage least-squares analysis are presentedin Table B.1 The first stage is presented in Table B.2.

177


178 B: Appendix to Chapter 3

table b.1 The Impact of Black Representation on White Racial Attitudes(Two-Stage Least-Squares Regression)


Blacks PushingToo Hard

Anti-blackAffect

RacialResentment


−0.15 (0.06)∗∗∗ −0.06 (0.02)∗∗∗ −0.09 (0.04)∗∗

Education −0.20 (0.02)∗∗∗ −0.04 (0.01)∗∗∗ −0.25 (0.02)∗∗∗

Income −0.02 (0.03) −0.00 (0.01) 0.02 (0.02)Age 0.15 (0.03)∗∗∗

0.06 (0.01)∗∗∗ −0.00 (0.03)Gender (1 = male) 0.03 (0.01)∗∗

0.00 (0.00) 0.03 (0.01)∗∗

Ideology (1 = liberal) −0.28 (0.03)∗∗∗ −0.05 (0.01)∗∗∗ −0.23 (0.03)∗∗∗

Party ID (1 = Democrat) −0.09 (0.02)∗∗∗ −0.00 (0.01) −0.07 (0.02)∗∗∗


−0.08 (0.04)∗∗ −0.01 (0.01) −0.01 (0.03)

Years Living in City −0.01 (0.02) −0.00 (0.01) 0.02 (0.02)Percent Black in City 0.26 (0.08)∗∗∗

0.09 (0.02)∗∗∗0.22 (0.06)∗∗∗

Level of Urbanism 0.01 (0.02) −0.02 (0.01)∗∗ −0.06 (0.02)∗∗∗

South (1 = yes) 0.03 (0.02)∗ 0.02 (0.00)∗∗∗0.02 (0.01)

1986 0.01 (0.02)1988 −0.02 (0.02) 0.02 (0.01)∗∗∗

0.05 (0.02)∗∗∗

1990 −0.00 (0.00) −0.02 (0.02)1992 −0.03 (0.02) −0.00 (0.01) 0.02 (0.01)∗


0.06 (0.05) 0.04 (0.01)∗∗0.04 (0.04)

Constant 0.79 (0.04)∗∗∗0.42 (0.01)∗∗∗ −0.17 (0.03)∗∗∗

Adj. R-squared 0.14 0.06 0.22

N 2181 2280 1911

Note: Figures are unstandardized coefficients with their standard errors.∗∗ p < 0.01

∗ p < 0.05

coding and descriptive statistics

Independent Variables

1. Education. Coded as a 6-category variable: 0 = completed lessthan 9th grade; 0.2 = 9–12 years; 0.4 = high school diploma;0.6 = 1–3 years college; 0.8 = bachelor’s degree; 1.0 = graduatedegree. Mean = 0.61 Std Dev = 0.31.

2. Age. Age in years normalized to 0–1. Mean = 0.34. Std Dev = 22.0



table b.2 Predicting a Black Mayoralty: The First-Stage of the Two-StageLeast-Squares Regression

Black Mayor1 = Black Mayor, 0 = No Black Mayor

Education 0.02 (0.03)Income 0.01 (0.03)Age −0.01 (0.02)Gender (1 = male) 0.01 (0.01)Ideology (1 = liberal) 0.04 (0.03)Party ID (1 = Democrat) −0.03 (0.02)Employment Status (1 = unemployed) 0.01 (0.03)Years Living in City −0.00 (0.02)Percent Black in City 1.4 (0.04)∗∗∗

Level of Urbanism −0.01 (0.03)South (1 = yes) −0.06 (0.02)∗∗∗

Per Capita Black Income in the City10.06 (0.01)∗∗∗

Percent of Blacks with College Degree1 −0.01 (0.01)Median Income in City1 −0.07 (0.02)∗∗∗

Percent with College Degree in City10.04 (0.01)∗∗∗

Republican Vote in 1988 in City1 −0.22 (0.08)∗∗∗

Constant −0.00 (0.00)N 4353

Adj R-squared 0.4

Note: Figures in parentheses are standard errors.1Exogenous variables not included in the second stage.∗∗∗ p < 0.01

∗∗ p < 0.05

∗ p < 0.10

3. Gender. Coded as 1 = male. Mean = 0.46. Std Dev = 0.50.4. Employment. Coded as 1 = unemployed, 0 otherwise. Mean =

0.04. Std Dev = 19.5. Ideology. Coded as a 7-category variable: 0 = very conservative;

0.17 = conservative; 0.33 = somewhat conservative; 0.50 = mod-erate; 0.67 = somewhat liberal; 0.83 = liberal; 1 = very liberal.Mean = 0.46. Std Dev = 0.22.

6. Partisan identification. Coded as a 7-category variable: 0 =strong Republican; 0.17 = weak Republican; 0.33 = inde-pendent/Republican; 0.50 = independent; 0.67 = indepen-dent/Democrat; 0.83 = weak Democrat; 1.0 = strong Democrat.Mean = 0.51. Std Dev = 0.34.


180 B: Appendix to Chapter 3

table b.3 The Impact of Black Representation on White Racial Attitudes –Confined to Cities with Black Mayors at Some Point in Their History


Blacks PushingToo Hard Anti-black Affect

RacialResentment


−0.11 (0.15) −0.01(0.00)∗ −.05 (0.02)∗∗∗

Education −1.5 (0.23)∗∗∗ −0.07 (0.01)∗∗∗ −0.24 (0.03)∗∗∗

Income 0.08 (0.25) −0.01 (0.01) 0.02 (0.03)Age 1.6 (0.32)∗∗∗

0.03 (0.01)∗∗ −0.00 (0.04)Gender (1 = male) 0.21 (0.12)∗ −0.00 (0.01) 0.01 (0.01)Ideology (1 = liberal) −2.2 (0.32)∗∗∗ −0.06 (0.01)∗∗∗ −0.25 (0.04)∗∗∗

Party ID (1 = Democrat) −0.59 (0.21)∗∗∗ −0.01 (0.01) −0.06 (0.02)∗∗


−0.37 (0.36) −0.00 (0.01) −0.01 (0.04)

Years Living in City 0.05 (0.21) 0.01 (0.01) 0.05 (0.02)∗

Percent Black in City 0.71 (0.40)∗ 0.04 (0.02)∗ 0.00 (0.00)Level of Urbanism 0.06 (0.26) 0.01 (0.01) −0.08 (0.03)∗∗∗

South (1 = yes) 0.34 (0.16)∗∗0.01 (0.01) 0.02 (0.02)

1986 −0.30 (0.22) −0.00 (0.01) 0.01 (0.02)1988 −0.59 (0.21)∗∗∗

0.02 (0.01)∗∗∗0.05 (0.02)∗∗∗

1990 −0.60 (0.25)∗∗∗ −0.01 (0.02)1992 −0.87 (0.20)∗∗∗ −0.02 (0.001)∗∗∗


−0.08 (0.20) 0.00 (0.01) 0.01 (0.02)

Constant 0.41(0.01) 13 (0.04)Intercept 1 −4.2 (0.37)∗∗∗

Intercept 2 −0.79 (0.34)∗∗

Adj. R-squared/pseudoR-squared

0.19 0.09 0.24

Chi Square 250

N 1177 1196 1039

Note: Figures are unstandardized coefficients with their standard errors.∗∗ p < 0.01

∗ p < 0.05

7. Years living in city. Years of residence in municipality normalized.Mean = 0.29. Std Dev = 0.31.

8. Percent black in city. Percent black normalized. Mean = 0.26. StdDev = 0.19.



9. South. Coded as 1 = south; 0 = otherwise. Mean = 0.26. StdDev = 0.44.

10. Urbanism Coded. as 3-category variable: 0 = central city of 50

largest metropolitan areas; 0.50 = central city of other metroareas; 1.0 = suburb of metropolitan area. Mean = 0.61. StdDev = 0.28.

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c


case study selection

My primary goal in including case studies of individual cities was to illus-trate the process of racial learning and to demonstrate as clearly as pos-sible how information from the actions of incumbent black mayors andchanges in local conditions under black mayors did or did not translateinto changes in white attitudes and behavior. As such, I wanted to includeat least one city where there was a marked change in white views and votesover time and one city where little change in white political behavior wasevident. By looking at both cities, I could answer two critical questions.First, what is it about experiencing black mayoral leadership that leadsto greater acceptance of black representation? And, second, why, in somecases, do whites continue to resist black leadership?

Choosing the specific cities was then fairly straightforward. Obviously,I had to choose cities that had experienced a transition from a white to ablack mayoralty. Across the United States, there are only thirty-three citieswith a population over 100,000 that have experienced a transition from anelected white mayor to an elected black mayor. In order to gauge changesin white support for black leadership, it was also critical to have a seriesof biracial elections. Thus, I limited the choice set to the 26 cities where ablack challenger won against a white opponent and then ran for reelectionagainst a white challenger. Choosing between these cities depended morethan anything else on data considerations. Practically speaking, to followthe process of learning and to assess the roles of racial views and theincumbent’s performance over time, I needed a fairly extensive empiricalrecord of white attitudes and white political choices. Very few cities in

182



America have regular or even semi-regular polls that include questionsabout local leaders, racial concerns, and local conditions.

Only three cities, Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, fit these dataconsiderations well.1 Fortunately, these three cities included one city, LosAngeles, where there was a clear, positive change in white behavior overthe course of black leadership and two other cities, Chicago and NewYork, where there was little change in white behavior under the blackmayoralty. Given that the empirical record in Chicago is slightly moreextensive than the record in New York and that Chicago is probably themost notorious case of white opposition to black leadership, I chose tofocus on Chicago rather than New York. Much of the evidence that I couldgather on New York is, however, highlighted in Chapter 4 or included atvarious points throughout the book. Happily, Los Angeles and Chicagoalso represented two cities with very different racial demographics. Thus,using these two cities, I could compare the dynamics of a minority whitecity with the patterns found in a racially balanced city.2 The fact that LosAngeles and Chicago are two of the largest cities in the nation meant thatthey fit one more criteria: people care about what goes on in these cities.Both are well-known cities that spark greater than average interest.

Given potentially important regional differences in white reactions toblack leadership, I also considered adding a case study from the South.There were, however, two main barriers to including a southern case. Thefirst is finding cities with biracial elections. In most of the cities in theSouth that have elected black mayors, mayoral elections after the firstblack mayoral victory generally pit a black incumbent against a secondblack candidate. This makes it difficult to assess changes in white supportfor black representation over time. The second problem, as already noted,is finding local polls that include questions about racial views and mayoralpolitics over time. This kind of data is by no means necessary to do a casestudy, but it is one of the few ways to obtain a fairly definitive test ofhow the role of race has changed over time in a particular city. These twoissues left me with four flawed possibilities. Houston and Dallas havesome limited polling data but have only recently elected black mayors.

1 Other cities have a range of relevant data – not the least of which are voting records. Datapoints from the cities not included in the case studies are extremely helpful and wheneverpossible are used to illustrate different points throughout the book.

2 I also considered including a case study of a minority white city. Unfortunately, no minoritywhite city fit my criteria. Most of these cities did not have a biracial black incumbent elec-tion and of those that did none had a sufficient empirical record with enough survey datameasuring white racial concerns and voting preferences to warrant an extended case study.


184 C: Appendix to Chapter 5

There is not much time over which to assess changes in white attitudesand voting behavior in these two cities.3 Birmingham and Memphis havea longer history of black mayoral representation but much less in the wayof polling data and certainly nothing like the repeated exit polls that areavailable in Los Angeles and Chicago. In the end, it was clear that anysouthern case study would be too thin. In lieu of an extended case studyfrom a Southern city, I included as much of the relevant data from theseSouthern cities as possible in different chapters of the book. These datasuggest that the pattern in Southern cities is not appreciably different fromthe pattern in non-Southern cities.

1969 survey: coding and descriptive statistics

The National Opinion Research Center conducted face-to-face interviewsof 198 adults from the 1st and 12th council districts in the city of LosAngeles. The two districts cover the northern half of the San FernandoValley. These districts were almost exclusively white. Within the districts,neighborhoods were chosen with probabilities proportional to their pop-ulation. At the time, the valley was the largest “bedroom suburb” of thecity, with a population of nearly 1 million. It tends to be more conservativethan Los Angeles as a whole, and thus the results of the survey cannot betaken as representative of the city as a whole (see Kinder and Sears 1981

for more details on the survey instrument).

Dependent Variable

Vote1. “Suppose the election were today between Mayor Yorty and

Thomas Bradley. Which one would you vote for?” Coded as 1 =intend to vote for Bradley; 0 =Yorty. Mean = 0.45. Std Dev = 0.49.


Racial Concerns1. Bradley will favor black interests. “If elected Mayor Thomas

Bradley would show more favoritism to his supporters than mostother mayors.” Coded as 1 = strongly disagree; 2 = somewhat dis-agree; 3 = don’t know; 4 = somewhat agree; 5 = strongly agree.Mean = 3.3. Std Dev = 0.97.

3 In addition, Stein, Ulbig, and Post (2005) have already provided a detailed analysis ofchanges in white voting patterns using the data available in Houston.



2. Concerned about black gains. Scale made up of responses to thefollowing three statements: (A) “Negroes shouldn’t push themselveswhere they’re not wanted.” (B) “Over the past few years, Negroeshave got more than they deserve.” (C) “Hard working people likeme have not done as well as Negroes over the past few years.”Reliability of scale: alpha = 0.60. Mean = 0.59. Std Dev = 0.18.

Incumbent’s Record1. Satisfied with city services. “How satisfied are you with some of the

public services the city is supposed to provide for your neighbor-hood?” Scale made up of responses to “Public Schools and Neigh-borhoods?”, “Parks and playgrounds?”, Garbage Collection?”,and “Police Protection.” Reliability of scale: alpha = 0.65. Mean =0.38. Std Dev = 0.28.

2. Satisfied with economic gains. “In general, would you say that youare very satisfied, somewhat satisfied, somewhat dissatisfied, or verydissatisfied with your economic gains over the past five years?”Mean = 2.3. Std Dev = .92.

Political Ideology1. Liberal/conservative ideology. Self-placement, coded as 1 = liberal;

2 = conservative. Mean = 1.5. Std Dev = 0.50.2. Party identification. Coded as 1 = strong Democrat; 2 = moderate

Democrat; 3 = Independent/other party; 4 = weak Republican; 5 =strong Republican. Mean = 3.4. Std Dev = 1.3.

White Racial Prejudice1. Stereotypes. Scale made up of responses to the following two

statements: (A) “Negroes are just as intelligent as whites.” (B) “Ifa Negro family with about the same income and education as youmoved next door, would you mind it?” (C) “How strongly wouldyou object if a member of your family wanted to bring a Negrofriend home to dinner?” Reliability of scale: alpha = 0.60. Mean =2.2. Std Dev = 0.85.

Demographics1. Age. Coded as 1 = 18–29; 2 = 30–44; 3 = 45–64; 4 = 65 & over.

Mean = 2.6. Std Dev = 1.4.2. Education. Coded as 1 = seventh grade or less; 2 = grade school

graduate; 3 = some high school; 4 = high school graduate;



5 = technical school; 6 = junior college; 7 = some college; 8 =college graduate; 9 = more than college. Mean = 5.2. Std Dev =2.2.

3. Income. Coded as 1 = less than $5,000; 2 = $5–7,500; 3 = $7.5–9,999; 4 = $10–14,999; 5 = $15–19,999; 6 = $20–24,999; 7 =$25–49,999; 8 = over $50,000. Mean = 3.5. Std Dev = 1.7.

4. Sex. Coded as 0 = male; 1 = female. Mean = 0.52. Std Dev = 0.59.

1980 survey: question wording, coding,

and descriptive statistics

The Los Angeles Times conducted 1,295 telephone interviews of adultresidents of the city of Los Angeles. Of the total respondents 482 werewhite.

Dependent Variable

Bradley Approval1. “What is your impression of Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley?”

Coded as 1 = very unfavorable; 2 = somewhat unfavorable; 3 =somewhat favorable; 4 = very favorable. Mean = 2.9. Std Dev =0.79.


Racial Concerns1. Concerned about black gains. Scale made up of three questions:

(A) “Do you think the government has paid too much attention toblacks and Mexican-Americans and other minority groups? (B) Doblacks have “too much economic power?” (C) Do blacks have “toomuch political power?” Reliability of scale: alpha = 0.65 Mean =1.3. Std Dev = 0.55.

White Racial Prejudice1. Prejudice Scale. Scale made up of responses to the following two

statements: (A) “Negroes are just as intelligent as whites.” (B) “Ifa Negro familiy with about the same income and education as youmoved next door, would you mind it?” (C) “How strongly wouldyou object if a member of your family wanted to bring a Negrofriend home to dinner?” Reliability of scale: alpha = 0.60. Mean =7.6. Std Dev = 1.4.



table c.1 The Vote in the 1969 Election(Logistic Regression)

Vote for Bradley

Racial ConcernsBradley Will Favor Black Interests −0.83 (0.19)∗∗

Concerned about Black Gains −2.5 (1.2)∗∗

White Racial Prejudice −0.01 (0.22)

Incumbent’s RecordSatisfied with City Services −0.75 (0.71)Satisfied with Economic Gains −0.29 (0.21)

Political IdeologyLiberal/Conservative Ideology −0.69 (0.39)Party Identification −0.39 (0.14)∗∗

DemographicsAge −0.17 (0.14)Education 0.05 (0.11)Income 0.08 (0.14)Female 0.16 (0.36)Constant −7.6 (1.7)∗∗

Pseudo R-Squared 0.26

Chi Squared 66∗∗

N 188

Note: ∗p < 0.05

∗∗p < 0.01

Incumbent’s Record1. Satisfied with city. “How do you feel things are going in Los Angeles

these days?” Coded as 1 = very badly; 2 = pretty badly; 3 = prettywell; 4 = very well. Mean = 2.5. Std Dev = 0.77.

2. Improved race relations. “Do you think that relations betweenblack people and white people have gotten better since the Wattsriot in 1965? ”Coded as 1 = gotten worse; 2 = no change 3 =gotten better; Mean = 2.3. Std Dev = 0.56.

Political Ideology1. Liberal/conservative ideology. Self-placement, coded as 1 = Strong

Liberal; 2 = Moderate Liberal; 3 = Middle of the Road; 4 = Mod-erate Conservative; 5 = Strong Conservative. Mean = 2.9. StdDev = 1.1.

2. Party identification. Coded as 1 = registered Democrat; 2 = regis-tered in other party/no party; 3 = registered Republican. Mean =1.8. Std Dev = 0.92.



table c.2 Comparing Bradley Approval in 1969 and 1980

Support for Bradley

As a Challenger1 As an Incumbent2

Racial ConcernsConcerned about Black Gains −2.9 (1.1)∗∗

0.51 (0.32)

Incumbent’s RecordSatisfied with City Services −0.57 (0.64) −0.57 (0.12)∗∗

Racial PrejudiceWhite Racial Prejudice −0.07 (0.22) 0.06 (0.07)

Political IdeologyLiberal/Conservative Ideology −0.96 (0.37) −0.25 (0.09)∗∗

Party Identification −0.30 (0.13)∗∗ −0.02 (0.10)

DemographicsAge −0.13 (0.13) −0.13 (0.09)Education 0.03 (0.10) 0.07 (0.07)Income 0.07 (0.13) −0.02 (0.13)Female 0.12 (0.34) 0.44 (0.17)∗

Constant −4.2 (1.3)∗∗ –Cut 1 – −2.4 (0.93)Cut 2 – −1.6 (0.92)Cut 3 – 0.50 (0.91)Pseudo R-Squared 0.18 0.13

Chi Squared 46∗∗

54∗∗

N 190 194

Note: ∗p < 0.05

∗∗p < 0.01

1 Logistic Regression.2 Ordered Probit

Demographics1. Age. Coded as 1 = 18–29; 2 = 30–44; 3 = 45–64; 4 = 65 & over.

Mean = 2.2. Std Dev = 1.0.2. Education. Coded as 1 = grade school or less; 2 = grade school

graduate; 3 = some high school; 4 = high school graduate; 5 =some college; 6 = college graduate; 7 = more than college.Mean = 4.9. Std Dev = 1.3.

3. Income. “Yearly income of all the members of your family living athome.” Coded as 1 = less than $10,00; 2 = in-between; 3 = morethan $25,000. Mean = 2.3. Std Dev = 0.71.

4. Sex Coded as 0 = male; 1 = female. Mean = 0.57. Std Dev = 0.49.

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212

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Index

Addonizio, Hugh, 55

Alston, D., 162

American National Election Study(ANES) surveys, 12, 34, 74

Arrington, Richard, Jr., 2, 52, 57, 59,68, 100

Asian American leadership, 121,150–6

Atlantablack challenger elections in, 46, 52,

71

black incumbency elections in, 44

black mayoral leadership in, 31,83

change in attitudes in, 67

Atlantic City, 55

Austin, 155

authority of blacks, and white learningacross cities, 98

incumbents, 27; in Congress, 142–3

information and, 84, 93–4

majority white cities and, 28

stereotypes and, 17–18

Bailey, Donn, 130

Baker, James, 59

Baltimore, 51, 149, 150

Barry, Marion, 26

Berriozabal, Maria, 155

BirminghamArrington on, 2

black challenger elections in, 51, 52,57

black incumbency elections in, 68,100

black mayoral representation in,184

Bishop, Sanford, 145

black challenger electionsblack incumbency elections

compared to, 41, 67–8

candidate quality in, 54–5, 127

for Congress, 144

conventional political factors and,54–8

fear in, 15–17, 105–9, 125–8

individual voices in, 58–60

information and fear in, 15–17,105–9, 125–8

outcome of, 44

previous elections and, 57

race in, 51–4

transformation of white vote in,60–2

voter turnout at, 70

white support in, 18

See also Bradley, Tom; Washington,Harold

213


214 Index

black communityexpectations of black leadership in,

147–8

size and resources of, 42, 84

white views of, 75–6, 78

black incumbency electionsblack challenger elections and, 41,

67–8

candidate quality in, 61, 138

change in white behavior and, 46

across cities, 101–2

fear in, 48–9, 131, 132–3

all mayors in, 46–8

prejudice model and, 22

race in, 62, 72

record in office and, 63–6

representativeness of data on, 42–3

voter turnout and, 45–6, 48

white learning and, 48–50, 66–8

white opposition in, 45

white support in, 18, 30–1, 43–5,47–8

See also Bradley, Tom; Washington,Harold

black representation, 1–2

and African Americans, 147–50

and Asian American and Latinorepresentation, 151–3

changes in perceptions of, 78

concerns about, 106, 125–8

effects of, 159

expectations of, 26, 65, 147–8

increasing, 163–5, 166

information effects of, 3–4

interracial contact and, 161–2

at mayoral level, 10–11

polarizing effect of, 88

possibilities of, 14

research questions regarding, 34

white assessment of, 19–21

white community and, 159–61

white information about, 18–19

and white learning, 5–9, 25–30

white reaction to, 2–3

white support and, 22

See also minority representationBositis, David, 149

Box, Charles, 53

Bradley, Tomon accomplishments, 119

campaigns of, 105, 108–9, 164

election and tenure of, 104, 113

as incumbent, 114–16

information model and, 109

newspaper coverage of, 116–17

policy agenda of, 109–11

views of, 67, 117–22

white prosperity and, 111–12

white support and, 30, 44, 112–14

Brooke, Edward, 144

Brown, Jerry, 149

Brown, Lee, 62

Burris, Roland, 134

Byrne, Jane, 99, 133, 137

campaignsderacialization of, 16, 53–4, 108–9,

164–5

media in, 16, 67–8, 108

racialization of, 49–50, 52–3, 98,126–7, 137–8, 172

spending on, 50, 138, 173

tone of, 70–1, 98–100

candidate quality, 50, 54–5, 61, 127,138, 173

Carson, Julia, 6

case studies, 182–4. See also Bradley,Tom; Chicago; Los Angeles;Washington, Harold

challengers, see black challengerelections

Charlotte, 45, 57

Chicagoblack incumbency elections in, 62

black mayoral leadership in, 123–5

conventional politics and, 56,135–40

economy of, under black leadership,136–7

fear in, 58, 59

party allegiances and, 57

racialized campaigns in, 137–8

racialized voting in, 133–5

selection criteria and, 183


Index 215

tone of campaign in, 71

white backlash model and, 31

See also Washington, HaroldCisneros, Henry, 152

city councils, 127–8, 129

civil rights movement, 24

Cleaver, Emmanuel, 100

Cleveland, 57, 67, 100, 150

congressional elections, 31, 142–5,146

control, see authority of blacks andwhite learning

Daley, Richard M., 133

Dallas, 139, 183

data sets, 171–5

data sources, 174

Davis, Danny, 134

democracy, transition to, 156

Democrats, 26, 85–9

demographics, 95–7, 98–100, 107,120, 172, 185, 188

Denver, 154

descriptive representation, 8–9

Des Ruisseaux, Jo Ann, 105

Detroit, 25, 46, 52, 56, 83, 148

Dinkins, David, 59, 92–3

division in black vote, 149

Eisinger, Peter, 30, 46, 52

electoral resources, 44–5

empirical strategy, 9–10, 32–7, 65. Seealso variables

endorsements, 50, 55–6, 61, 173

Epton, Bernard, 55, 56, 57, 126, 127

Evans, Tim, 134

exit poll data, 59

fearin black challenger elections, 15–17,

105–9, 125–8

in black incumbency elections,48–9, 131, 132–3

measures of, 51–2, 74–5

feeling thermometer, 75

Ferraro, John, 116

Ferre, Maurice, 154

Filipini, Elmer, 133

Flint, 55

Gantt, Harvey, 45, 53, 57, 71

Garcia, Gus, 155

Gardner, Joseph, 134

Gary, 149, 150

gender transitions, 157

Gibson, Kenneth, 56, 59

Goode, Wilson, 55, 56, 99

Grimshaw, Jackie, 137

Giuliani, Rudy, 93

Hartford, 139, 155

Helms, Jessie, 71

Herenton, Willie, 92

Higgs, Otis, 92

housing market, 64–5

Houston, 62, 139, 183

immigration, 139

incumbents, see black incumbencyelections

Independents, 87

individual voices, 58–60, 105, 118

information model of voting behavior,5–9, 15

African American voters and,147–50

authority of blacks, and whitelearning, and, 84, 93–4

black challenger elections and,15–17, 105–9, 125–8

black incumbency and, 17–21

black representation and, 3–4,18–19

Bradley and, 109

Chicago and, 124–5, 139

congressional elections and, 142–6

credibility of information and, 5, 17

Latino and Asian Americanleadership and, 150–6

Los Angeles and, 119–20

minority white cities and, 28

political transitions and, 141–2

politics and, 7–8

predictions of, 32–3, 48, 51


216 Index

information model of voting (cont.)racially balanced cities and, 29

recommendations based on, 163–6

research supporting, 30, 38–9, 89

transitions around world and,156–8

interracial contact, 84, 100, 161–2

interracial contact hypothesis, 15

Jackson, Jesse, 126, 144

Jackson, Maynard, 71, 83

Joint Center for Political andEconomic Studies data set, 171,175

Kansas City, 100

Kennedy, John F., 157

Kim, Jay C., 152

King, Scott, 149

Latino leadershipdifferences from black leadership,

153

mayoral elections, 153–5

overview of, 150–6

similarities to black leadership,151–3

white learning and, 153–6

Latino population, 6, 121

Lee, Barbara, 6

Locke, Gary, 154, 156

Los Angelesblack mayoral leadership in, 103–5

campaigns in, 71

demographics of, 107, 120

opinions expressed in, 59, 67

public opinion polls, 105, 184–8

race relations in, 112, 120–1

selection criteria and, 183

white learning in, 112

See also Bradley, TomLouisiana, 23

Love, Eulia, 110

Majerczyk, Aloysius, 59

majority black cities, see minoritywhite cities

majority white cities, 28–9, 47, 94, 95,100

Mayoral Careers Dataset, 175

mayorsAsian American, 155–6

black, 10–11, 36

black incumbent elections for, 47

elections for, 96

Latino, 153–5

in majority black cities, 148–9

perceptions of, 19

performance models of approval,65

power of, 25

reelection rates over time, 47

spending by, 63

white experience with black, 89–90

McDonald, Laughlin, 144

McKinney, Cynthia, 145

media in campaigns, 16, 67–8,108

Memphis, 51, 66, 91–2, 149, 184

Miami, 151, 154

migration, racial, 24

Milner, Thirman, 52, 67

Mineta, Norman, 154

minority representation, 6, 8–9. Seealso Asian American leadership;black representation; Latinoleadership

minority white cities, 28, 94, 95, 100,148–9

Mollenkopf, John, 92

Morial, Ernest, 55

Moseley-Braun, Carol, 134

Murphy, Mark, 118

National Opinion Research Center,184–6

National Roster of Black ElectedOfficials, 74

neighborhood integration, 59, 125

Newark, 51, 55, 56, 59, 67, 71

New Haven, 62

New Orleans, 44, 51, 55

New York City, 59, 62, 91, 92–3, 139,183


Index 217

Oakland, 149

Obama, Barak, 134

O’Malley, Martin, 149

opinion, aggregate compared toindividual, 21

partisanship, 26, 57–8, 85–9, 107,185, 187. See also Democrats;Republicans

Pena, Federico, 154

Perez, Eddie, 155

performance models of mayoralapproval, 65

Pettigrew, T., 162

Philadelphia, 55, 56, 99, 139, 149

Pincham, Eugene, 134

policy platform, 56, 153

politicsinformation and, 7–8

race and, 6–7, 22, 39–41, 114–17,160

redistricting decisions, 102, 165–6

role of, in lives of Americans,162–3

See also partisanshippollsters and Bradley, 119

power, see authority of blacks, andwhite learning

prejudice, 21, 27, 185, 186

prejudice model of voting behavior, 4,21–3, 31, 33, 40, 87

public opinion polls, 105, 130–1,184–8

racein black challenger elections, 51–4

in black incumbency elections,48–9, 62, 72

in congressional elections, 145–6

context of, 53

as heuristic, 16

in Los Angeles, 120–1

political choice and, 6–7

politics and, 6–7, 22, 39–41,114–17, 160

prejudice model of voting behaviorand, 21–3

study of, 162

in urban areas, 149–50

See also campaigns, deracializationof, racialization of

race relations, future of, 166–7

racial context and interracialdynamics, 100

racially balanced citiesblack leadership and, 94

control in, 101

differences in, 124

future of elections in, 139–40

redistricting decisions and, 165–6

threat and, 53

tone of campaigns in, 98–100

white learning and, 29–30

white support in, 96

See also Chicagoracial resentment scale, 76

record in office, 63–6, 107, 185, 187

redistribution of resources, 25, 63, 66,174

redistricting decisions, 102, 165–6

Reich, Kenneth, 108

religious transitions, 157

Republicans, 26, 85–9

Rice, Norm, 57, 100

Rich, Wilbur, 52

Rizzo, Frank, 100

Robbins, Alan, 114–15

Rush, Bobby, 134

San Antonio, 151, 152, 154, 155

San Bernardino, 155

San Francisco, 139

Sawyer, Eugene, 133, 134

Schwada, Thomas, 119

Scott, Robert, 6

Seattle, 57, 100

selection bias, 35–7

selection criteria, 42–3

Sharp, James, 55

social dominance theory, 23, 33

Sonenshein, Raphael, 110, 119

South Africa, 156

Starks, Robert, 7

Stokes, Carl, 67, 100


218 Index

Suarez, Xavier, 154

support for black candidates overtime, 69–72, 81–5, 146

Thatcher, Margaret, 157

Thernstrom, Abigail, 7, 162

threat, racial, see feartipping point, racial, 29

tone of white candidate’s campaign,70–1, 98–100

turnout, see voter turnouttwo-stage least-squares analysis,

177

uncertainty, electoral, 4, 15–17, 59

Usry, James, 55

Valles, Judith, 155

variablesBradley approval, 186

campaign spending, 173

candidate quality, 173

change in per capita income, 174

coding and descriptive statistics,178–81

demographics, 185, 188

endorsements, 173

incumbent record, 185, 187

political ideology, 185, 187

racial, 172, 184, 185, 186

redistributive spending, 174

vote, 171–2, 184

voter turnout, 171–2, 174

Villaraigosa, Antonio, 103–21, 155

violence, racial, 24

voter turnoutin black challenger elections, 70

in black incumbency elections,45–6, 48, 148

in Chicago, 127–8, 129

in Los Angeles, 114

racial demographics and, 96

as variable, 171–2, 174

white flight and, 68–9

voting behavior, 39–41

empirical strategy and, 32

in Los Angeles black challengerelection, 105–8

testing explanations of, 38–9

white backlash model of, 4, 23–4,31

See also information model ofvoting behavior; prejudice modelof voting behavior

Vrdolyak, Ed, 71, 99, 133, 138

Wallace, George, 71

Washington, D.C., 10, 26

Washington, Haroldaffirmative action and, 130

campaign of, 126, 131, 137–8; andracialization, 52, 99

city council and, 127–8, 129

death of, 133–5

Epton and, 56

experience of, 54

as incumbent, 130–3

information provided by tenure of,128–30

resources of, 138

white backlash model and, 31

white opposition to, 127, 131–2

Washington (state), 156

Watson, Sharon, 62

Wheat, Alan, 53

white attitudes, 78–80

Asian American and Latinoleadership and, 153–6

assessment of, 73–8

black mayoral leadership and, 80–1,89–90

changes over time in, 81–5, 159–61

comparison of, 78

measurement of, 77

partisanship and, 85–9

See also fear; uncertainty; whitelearning

white backlash model of votingbehavior, 4, 23–4, 31

white flight, 68–9, 77

white learning, 73

across cities, 27–30, 91–4

across individuals, 26–7

across leaders, 25–6

black incumbency elections and,48–50, 66–8


Index 219

conditions for occurrence of, 141

from distance, 78, 164

importance of, 5–9

in Los Angeles, 112

as process, 103–21

views of black community and,75–6

Wilder, Douglas, 6, 53

Wilmington, 59

Woo, Michael, 103–21, 152

Yorty, Sam, 71, 106, 107, 108, 109,116

Young, Coleman, 25, 52, 56, 83, 148

changing white attitudes toward black political...

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